Florence Khaxas
Namibia
Florence /Khaxas is a transformative African feminist leader and the founder and Executive director of Y-Fem Namibia Trust (Young feminist Movement Namibia) in 2009 in Swakopmund. She started her work as an activist in the area of women’s human rights of marginalized rural young women including lesbians in 2009. By advocating for the rights of young women living with HIV in Urban informal settlements by providing them with access to information on SRH-r and access to health. She is a strategic thinker, African Lesbian poet and storyteller and has used performance arts to advance the rights of lesbians in Namibia. She works in the intersectional feminist areas of human rights, race, gender, class, justice, age, sexuality & peace. Her community activism is cross-cutting movements include, LGBT rights, Women’s rights, sex workers rights, women living with disabities, mental health. She has published several short stories, articles and poetry. She is passionate about women’s rights and developing young women leaders. I am also a very outspoken activist when it comes to LGBT human rights issues and an advocate on SRHR of lesbian and bisexual women. I am a striving young feminist, striving to uplift the feminist movement by creating feminist platform for young women to create dialogues and question their livelihood. I have participated in various international women’s rights conferences to broaden my understanding and form networks with women across the world. One of my new found interest are economic justice for women and finding the linkages of poverty, oppression, dominance, violence, inadequate access to resources as a field I would like to explore and create means to address the issues among women in Namibia. I am also very interested the concept of religious fundamentalism and how it impacts the lives of women in Africa and how critical thinking, thus spaces are narrowed making the issues around SRHR, women’s human rights and the roles of human rights defenders impossible to question.