This special issue aims to intervene critically in debates in public health about sexual rights and ways of de-stigmatising HIV/AIDS, in which silence and secrets are seen to undermine well-being and perpetuate stigma.  It presents key insights from collaborative studies on HIV/AIDS and youth sexual health, arguing that advocates of disclosure and sexual rights need to think more contextually and tactically in promoting truth-telling. The authors aim to enhance current thinking on secrecy, which examines it primarily as social practice, by emphasizing the centrality of the body and the experience of embodiment in the making and unmaking of secrets.

 The papers that can already be downloaded are:

 1. Anita Hardon and Deborah Posel: Secrecy as embodied practice: beyond the confessional imperative.

2. Astrid Bochow: Let's talk about sex: reflections on conversations about love and sexuality in Kumasi and Endwa, Ghana

 3. Josien de Klerk: The compassion of concealment: silence between older caregivers and dying patients in the AIDS era, northwest Tanzania

4. Nguyen Thi Thu Huong: Rape disclosure: the interplay of gender, culture and kinship in contemporary Vietnam.

5. Eileen Moyer: Faidha gani? What's the point: HIV and the logics of (non)-disclosure among young activists in Zanzibar.

6. Erica van der Sijpt: ‘The vagina does not talk’: conception concealed or deliberately disclosed in eastern Cameroon.

7. Sakhumze Mfecane: Narratives of HIV disclosure and masculinity in a South African village.

8. Margaret Kyakuwa and Anita Hardon: Concealment tactics among HIV-positive nurses in Uganda.