ARE SCHOOLS SAFE HAVENS FOR CHILDREN?

management” (Pinheiro 2006b). If teachers do not have other tools for maintaining classroom order anddiscipline, they may resort to verbal or physical abuse. Appropriate laws and policies are critical foraddressing SRGBV, but failing to back them up with the necessary training and resources inhibits theability of schools and individuals to address the problem.TEACHER SHORTAGESTeacher shortages can lead parents and school officials to accept abusive teachers. It was reported inKenya that a teacher, who had made several girls pregnant, was pardoned because there was no one totake over his science class. The local parent teacher association believed that firing the teacher wouldhave a negative impact on the performance of the school (Mulama 2004).Fears of potential teacher shortages can also contribute to schools and communities failing to disciplineteachers who perpetrate gender-based violence. A study on education governance, HIV, and AIDS inMalawi found that a lack of enforcement against perpetrators may have been due to high levels ofabsenteeism and the deaths of educational administrators at all levels (Chawani and Kadzamira 2004).The authors reported that 40 percent of the school attrition due to deaths was attributable to AIDS-relatedillnesses. Administrators may overlook teachers’ conduct because they fear being unable to replaceteachers if they were to fire or transfer perpetrators.Teacher shortages, or the fear of shortages, are a barrier to effective prevention and responseprogramming because they allow perpetrators to act with impunity. By failing to prosecute perpetrators,students come to understand that other adults condone or accept this violence, and their victimization.GUIDANCE COUNSELORSWithout trained guidance counselors in schools, there may be no one who is equipped to help childrendeal with the aftermath of abuse. Children in Uganda who had been abused reported that they neededcounseling about sexual abuse in order to recover, but that they did not receive adequate assistance fromadults (Save the Children Norway 2005). In Ethiopia, schools do not have guidance counselors to provideimmediate attention to victims of gender-based violence in schools (DevTech 2004a). In Jamaica, manyschools do not have guidance counselors, and those that do still face a number of constraints. Counselorshave limited time to spend supporting students because they are often assigned additional teaching and/oradministrative tasks (DevTech 2005). If counselors do not have the time needed to provide the necessarysupport, students may not see them as a viable outlet for reporting abuse and seeking assistance. TheJamaican study also indicated that students lacked trust in guidance counselors, believing the counselorsgossiped about them (DevTech 2005). Trust is key to encouraging students to report abuse and seeksupport. If students do not believe that counselors will maintain confidentiality, they may worry about therepercussions of an incident becoming public. They may fear reprisal from the perpetrator, shame infacing their parents, or the embarrassment of other students or school staff knowing what occurred.WHAT IS BEING DONE?School-related gender-based violence and its negative consequences are receiving increased attentionglobally. Donor organizations, private foundations, international nongovernmental organizations, anduniversity-based researchers are collaborating with national and community-based organizations toaddress gender violence directly. This section briefly discusses some of the initiatives that have beenundertaken, highlighting promising efforts to address the problem.ARE SCHOOLS SAFE HAVENS FOR CHILDREN?EXAMINING SCHOOL-RELATED GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE15