Namibia should adopt a human rights approach that prioritises the needs of its citizens to effectively address challenges like unemployment, poverty, and inequality. 

Speaking at a capacity-strengthening workshop in Windhoek, social justice activist Herbert Jauch outlined that this will require reforming and restructuring policies to ensure that communities have a voice and that national resources are shared more equitably between the wealthy and the less privileged.

Jauch pointed out that current laws favour the wealthy and powerful over the poor, rendering the livelihoods of local communities to nothing.
 
The social justice activist emphasised the need for communities to be empowered as agents of change by participating in law and policy-making.

There is also a need to redistribute assets for economic opportunities and incomes that would also benefit the poor and the marginalised, making an example of fishing quotas. 
 
Jauch expressed his disappointment with Namibia's embrace of neo-liberalism, highlighting the case of an oil prospecting company that displaced local people due to oil drilling. 

While this situation is portrayed as an advantage for the country, many Namibians remain sceptical about their actual benefits, demonstrating the disconnect between citizens and the wealth generated from the nation's resources and the country's control of its minerals.

"When you look at who controls the minerals—98% foreign ownership, the fishing likewise—who controls the land? 75% by white foreigners. The Dordabis people were first murdered in genocide, then evicted by white farmers, and the farm is given to the Russians, and the farmworkers get evicted again. It's absolutely crazy what we see happening—a colonial pattern that we see over and over. We have no ideological position as the state; the constitution talks about the welfare of the people, but we see millionaires getting tax rebates, directors and ministers being resettled on government farms—all people who earn enough to buy their own farms."

Jauch accused political leadership of not being development-orientated. 

It is imperative that land reforms favour the poor and do away with foreign ownership.

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Celma Ndhikwa