EDUCATION-RIGHTS: Girls Battle Sexual Violence in School

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

MEXICO CITY, Mar 28 2001 (IPS) - A new report on the “thousands of girls” being raped and sexually harassed in South African schools has added to the growing body of evidence about the discrimination and hardship girls across the developing world face in their quest for quality education.

“In schools across South Africa, thousands of girls of every race and economic group are encountering sexual violence and harassment that impede their access to education,” charged the New York City-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) in the report released Tuesday in Johannesburg. “Girls have been attacked in school toilet facilities, in empty classrooms and corridors, hostel rooms and dormitories.”

Typical of such abuse is what happened to a 13-year-old girl attending a school in a northern suburb of Johannesburg, the commercial centre of South Africa. She was raped by two of her classmates, boys aged 13 and 14 years. Thereafter, she stopped attending the school, the victim confessed to HRW.

In another incident, a 17-year-old girl was raped by four of her classmates in an empty classroom after school hours while a fifth boy watched, reveals the 138-page report, ‘Scared at School: Sexual Violence Against Girls in South African Schools’.

“Girls are learning that sexual violence and abuse are an inescapable part of going to school everyday, so they don’t go,” said Erika George, counsel to the Academic Freedom Programme at HRW and the author of the report. “Leadership at every level is vital to create an education system free of gender bias and sexual violence.”

Tthe abuse suffered by girls in South African schools is prevalent in a number of other countries too, “although such sexual harassment has not been extensively documented,” said Nata Duvvury, director for social conflict and transformation team at the Washington D.C.-based International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW).

“In India, there are regular newspaper reports of such abuse and there is also evidence from Peru that it is a problem,” added Duvvury. Research done by ICRW in Brazil also pointed to the “high level of violence” among adolescents.

The HRW expose comes in the wake of a report released early March by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) which shed light on the way girls in some developing countries were being denied access to quality education as a result of a traditional practice: early child marriages.

For such teenage girls, “early marriage has profound physical, intellectual, psychological and emotional consequences, cutting off educational opportunities and chances of personal growth,” argued the UNICEF report, ‘Early Marriages: Child Spouses’.

In countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, over half of all girls are married by the time they reach 18 years, the report stated. In countries like Honduras and Iraq, close to 30 percent of all girls were married during their teen years.

According to UNICEF, not only is such a practice a violation of the girls’ right to personal freedom but it also violates the right of a girl to receive quality education, which is spelled out in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in Article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

For Duvvury, such evidence raises serious questions about the commitment made by national education leaders in April last year at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal.

At that gathering, ministers of education and government representatives from 155 countries made a pledge to ensure that girls have access to quality education.

The Dakar Framework of Action, the final document emanating from the forum, declared that the gender gap in primary and secondary education would be eliminated by 2005. It set 2015 as the deadline for governments to achieve gender equality.

What is more, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan used that opportunity to launch a 10-year initiative focusing on girl’s education, under which agreements were to be established between UN agencies and countries to ensure political and economic commitment to end gender inequality in education.

“We really need the top-level governmental commitment (for) concrete and substantial support,” said Koto Kano, a programme specialist in the division of basic education at the UN Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), in reference to Annan’s initiative.

The challenge that such an initiative faces is a tremendous one, given the available evidence of girls either denied access to education or being prevented from pursuing with schooling they have already begun.

According to UNICEF, an estimated 120 million school age children in the developing world do not attend school, of which two-thirds, or close 80 million, are girls. A gender gap in education is most evident in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.

Gender bias has kept many girls from ever seeing the inside of a school, states HRW. “In many countries, girls do not have equal access to education because traditional customs and practices relegate them to subordinate status,” it said.

But equally troubling for this human rights lobby are “the obstacles” girls encounter at school, like gender-based violence, thus impeding their right to education. “Policymakers must place emphasis not only on getting girls to school, but also on keeping them there by keeping them safe,” HRW said.

As HRW declares in its report, South Africa was chosen “not only because of the scope of the problem but also because of the opportunities for change there, where educators both in and outside of government have shown increasing interest in finding solutions.”