Summary
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EDUCATION FOR ALL GLOBAL MONITORING REPORT 2015<br />
GENDER SUMMARY<br />
An evaluation of ActionAid’s Stop Violence Against<br />
Girls’ in School project found that girls’ clubs had<br />
positive effects on girls’ knowledge, attitudes and<br />
practices in identifying violations and managing<br />
violence. Clubs worked with communities and<br />
schools to improve relationships among boys, girls,<br />
teachers, parents and other community members,<br />
and ensure that channels were in place to report<br />
incidences of gender-related discrimination and<br />
violence (Parkes and Heslop, 2013).<br />
The Abriendo Oportunidades project for indigenous<br />
girls in Guatemala engages with community leaders<br />
and trains girls to run community girls’ clubs,<br />
which provide life-skills and leadership training to<br />
girls aged 8-18. By 2011, the project had reached<br />
3,500 girls with positive results. A 2010 evaluation<br />
found that all participants had completed sixth<br />
grade, compared with less than 82% of their peers<br />
nationally, and that 97% remained childless during<br />
the programme, compared with 78% of nonparticipants<br />
(Catino et al., 2013).<br />
Violence in schools can be addressed by<br />
advocacy and policy responses<br />
Campaigns, reports, advocacy and lobbying can<br />
help efforts to prevent violence in schools by raising<br />
awareness and promoting better knowledge of<br />
children’s rights to a safe education. The 2006<br />
UN World Report on Violence Against Children<br />
documented violence against children in school<br />
settings as a global phenomenon (Pinheiro, 2006).<br />
After its publication, there was an acceleration<br />
of global and regional initiatives to address<br />
school-based violence. Other notable high profile<br />
campaigns have included the Global Initiative to<br />
End All Corporal Punishment of Children launched<br />
in 2001, Plan International’s Learn Without Fear<br />
campaign, launched in 2011, and the Council of<br />
Europe’s One in Five campaign to protect children<br />
against sexual exploitation and abuse, begun in<br />
2010. The Don’t Hit, Educate campaign in Brazil<br />
uses discussion groups, music and theatre to raise<br />
community awareness. In 2014, Brazil became<br />
the 38th country to ban all forms of corporal<br />
punishment (Instituto Promundo, 2015).<br />
Attempts to address school-related genderbased<br />
violence, described earlier in this summary,<br />
build on these more general campaigns. Some<br />
countries in sub-Saharan Africa have enacted policy<br />
development to tackle gender-based violence,<br />
especially sexual violence. Liberia, a country<br />
emerging from conflict, has advocated for the<br />
development of a syllabus on gender-based violence<br />
for use by trained educators in schools (Antonowicz,<br />
2010). In South Africa, strategies to address<br />
gender-based violence are supported by a strong<br />
legal and policy framework, and by guidelines for<br />
schools on preventing sexual harassment and abuse<br />
(Parkes, 2015).<br />
In many other sub-Saharan African countries,<br />
international NGOs have worked with governments<br />
to strengthen legislation and guidelines on tackling<br />
gender-based violence in schools (Parkes, 2015).<br />
The Kenyan government and ActionAid collaborated<br />
with teachers’ unions to draft a bill to reinforce<br />
mechanisms for reporting sexual violence, and<br />
ensuring that guilty teachers are discharged, not<br />
transferred to other schools (Leach et al., 2014). In<br />
Ghana and Malawi, the Safe Schools project used<br />
national advocacy networks to lobby for revisions<br />
to the Teachers’ Code of Conduct and to call for<br />
stronger enforcement of regulations relating to<br />
teacher misconduct (DevTech Systems Inc., 2008).<br />
However, to ensure accountability measures are<br />
effective, they must be reinforced by legal and policy<br />
frameworks at government, district and school<br />
levels; be widely disseminated; and be enforced<br />
through effective leadership. In South Africa,<br />
strategies to address school-related gender-based<br />
violence are supported by a strong legal and policy<br />
framework and detailed guidelines for schools. Yet<br />
schools are not legally required to adopt the national<br />
guidelines and school leaders have been reluctant<br />
to report abuse of students by fellow staff members<br />
(Brock et al., 2014). A recent national survey in the<br />
country found that 7.6% of girls had experienced<br />
severe assault or rape at secondary school (Burton<br />
and Leoschut, 2013).<br />
Overall, there is little evidence that increased<br />
awareness of the prevalence of school-related<br />
gender-based violence over the last decade is<br />
translating into effective action to change behaviour<br />
and reduce levels of violence. Enforcement of laws<br />
is often poor, reporting and referral systems weak,<br />
and policy implementation patchy, partly because<br />
of deep-seated social and gender norms at the<br />
district, community and school levels. There also<br />
remains a lack of knowledge about what works in<br />
reducing the prevalence of gender-based violence in<br />
schools, and interventions are usually small, shortterm<br />
projects which are difficult to scale up (Leach<br />
and Dunne, 2014).<br />
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