Child rights advocates say many West African girls suffer from sexual violence at schools. |
DAKAR, 14 Dec 2006 (IRIN/PLUSNEWS) - Child rights advocates are increasingly facing a
dilemma: How to boost the number of girls getting an education while reducing
sexual violence in school?
Sexual violence at school is much more
widespread in the region than previously thought because families and education
authorities often hide or tolerate the problem, Jean-Claude Legrand, regional
child protection adviser for the UN children's agency (UNICEF), told
IRIN.
"If we want to improve the schooling rate in the region and restore
the credibility of schools, we must tackle the protection frame for children in
educational settings very seriously,” Legrand said. “Because if being enrolled
at school is risky, girls will be the first to be taken out.”
Violent
teachers
The worst abuses occur in secondary schools. Attending these
institutions is generally a luxury in sub-Saharan Africa, where enrollment of
girls is less than 10 percent in some countries, according to the UN.
Child rights advocates have found that children, particularly girls, are
frequently humiliated, sexually abused and exposed to sexually transmitted
diseases because of deep-seated beliefs in the merits of corporal
punishment.
"There is an obvious and direct link between punishment and
sexual abuse: the more authoritarian a teacher is, the more he will punish
students and the more he will abuse girls. It is not about poverty but abuse of
authority," Legrand said.
Sexual violence was also spreading to the
region’s numerous Koranic schools, he said. "They are becoming more and more
dangerous for girls, whereas before only boys suffered were harassed and beaten
by religious teachers,” he said.
Girls targeted
The amount
of gender-based violence in public schools has taken researches by surprise. In
Ghana, a 2003 UNICEF survey showed that 24 percent of schoolboys said they had
participated in rape, including gang rape, while 14 percent of girls said they
had been raped.
"We did not expect to find mass rapes in Ghana, one of
the first countries to enact and implement regulation to protect children at
schools," said Legrand. "Those cases seem to happen regularly, with the consent
of authorities, in order to punish girls seen as too independent and
free."
In a global study released in November by the UN secretary-general
on violence against children, human rights specialist Paulo Sergio Pinheiro said
violence in schools tends to promote gender inequality and
stereotyping.
"In West and Central Africa, teachers justified sexual
exploitation of female students by saying that their clothes and behaviour were
provocative, and that they were far from home and in need of sex," he
said.
The Ghana survey said that six percent of schoolgirls complained
that their teachers had threatened to give them lower grades unless they
consented to sex. Two thirds of girls said they did not disclose abuse because
of feelings of shame and powerlessness.
Legrand said many girls in
secondary schools found older lovers, or “sugar daddies”, to protect them from
male students and teachers.
Empowering girls
Some
countries have taken steps to ban corporal punishment in schools since the UN
General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 but
enforcement has been lax.
Disciplinary measures are often
counter-productive, Legrand said. Sometimes an abusive teacher will simply be
transferred to another school. Such action often makes the situation worse with
the abusive teacher finding another hunting ground, he said.
“Nothing is
done to protect or assist the children," he said.
Jean-Baptiste
Zoungrana, head of the African Expert Committee on the Rights and Well-Being of
the Child, said attempts to take legal action against teachers are often met
with resistance as communities often see teachers as unquestioned
authorities.
Anglophone, and some francophone countries such as Mali and
Senegal, have developed protective laws, codes of conduct for school staff and
implemented awareness campaigns for students and families.
In Mali,
officials have implemented a “governments of children” initiative to encourage
dialogue amongst children and show them they have choices.
"Looking only
at punishment doesn’t solve the problem," Legrand said. "We observe that when
children are empowered, the abuses start to disappear by
themselves."