| |
Back to Index
The
Southern African Conference on Violence Against Girls in Schools
- Towards sustainable Strategies
The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA)
and Action Aid International, (AAI)
May 03, 2006
The Open Society
Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) in collaboration with Action
Aid International, (AAI), are convening a SADC sub-regional conference
on Violence against Girls in Schools – Towards Sustainable Strategies,
in Harare, Zimbabwe from 8 to 10 MAY 2006. The conference is the
first in a series of activities in a larger program that will address
the issue of violence against girls in schools in the sub-region.
The purpose
of the conference is to promote joint consultation, understanding
and reflection on the Education For All (EFA), goal of girls’ education
and to review progress made by countries in the region in attaining
that EFA goal. The conference will specifically tackle the issue
of violence against girls in schools and formulate concrete strategies
for combating the problem to be implemented at national levels in
each country. The conference also seeks to enhance partnership among
civil society organizations, governments and development partners
in formulating, implementing and evaluating policies and programmes
to contribute to the EFA goal that deals specifically with gender.
Participants:
The conference will bring together;
- Ministries
of Education representatives
- Teachers’
Unions
- Civil Society
Education Coalitions
- African women
Educationists affiliated to the Forum for African Women &
Education, (FAWE, and
- Girls/women’s
rights activists In total there will be 75 participants in this
ground breaking conference.
Background
Violence against girls take place in the wider context of patriarchy,
gender based discrimination, unequal power relations, exclusion
and poverty. For girls around the world, exercising their right
to education is sometimes a very risky enterprise. They are at risk
in the community, in the family, on the journey to and from school,
in the school grounds and even in the classroom. In schools, violence
takes a range of forms including aggressive behaviour, intimidation
and physical assault by older boys, sexual advances and or actual
rape by male teachers or other students, as well as corporal punishment
and verbal abuse.
ActionAid International
conducted research on violence against girls in schools in early
2004 in Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria,
Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Vietnam. This showed that the
violence faced in and around schools was a significant factor in
forcing girls out of the education system. If they are abused, the
girls are blamed, not the perpetrators. Actual and the threat of
sexual violence is a significant factor that impedes girls’ access
to education, especially when the schools are at a distance from
their residences.
Yet schools
ought to be safe environments. It is possible to make schools into
effective oases of peace even in the midst of violent societies.
Governments can put in place policies to address violence against
girls. They can set up reporting mechanisms, punish perpetrators
and support the survivors. If they fail to do so then they have
let themselves become accomplices to a system of impunity. The stakes
are now higher than ever. This situation of gender inequality and
violence exacerbates women’s vulnerability to HIV/AIDS. In many
countries the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate is high in schools and it
is young girls who are the most vulnerable. Challenging violence
in this context can really be a matter of saving lives.
Why ACTIONAID is prioritizing violence against girls in schools
For AAI, the issue of violence against girls in schools is important
at many levels:
- Education
is one of the strongest areas of AA’s work and a key part of its
established identity.
- The rights
of girls and women are one of AAI’s six thematic priorities.
- Violence
against girls in schools is both a direct violation of their basic
rights and a major obstacle to them securing their right to education.
- AAI’s central
mission is to end poverty and this cannot be sustainably achieved
without girls who are educated and empowered.
- Violence
against girls in schools is not significantly on the agenda of
international organisations or national governments and yet is
an important factor that prevents the achievement of the Millennium
Development Goals. Last year, 58 millions girls didn’t
even go to primary school.
OSISA and Education
for All
The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) is part of
a network of autonomous foundations established by investor and philanthropist
George Soros. The mission of these foundations is to develop more
open societies through supporting a range of programmes in Education,
Media, Human Rights, Information and Communication Technologies, and
Economic Justice and Reform. New programmes have just been launched
in the areas of HIV/AIDS and Language Rights. OSISA operates in Angola,
Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia
and Zimbabwe. Support is offered for projects that are both national
and regional in scope. The regional secretariat is based in Johannesburg
with a sub-office in Angola. The OSISA Education programme, like the
other education programmes in the Soros network, seeks to contribute
to the transformation of the education sector in the region by making
a systemic and sustainable impact on improving access and quality
of education for disadvantaged children and adults.
Conference objectives
Specifically, the conference seeks:
- To provide
Civil Society Organizations, governments and other relevant stakeholders
in the region, an opportunity to reflect on the issue of violence
against girls in schools and how it affects progress towards achieving
the EFA goal of gender parity and equity in their various countries;
- To look at
the challenges the countries face in trying to address the issue
of violence against girls in schools;
- To review
lessons in implementation of programs aimed at addressing violence
in education and highlight the best practices that could be shared;
- To highlight
policies that have proven to be effective in dealing with violence
against girls in education
- To develop
strategies for dealing with violence against girls in education
in the region;
- To strengthen
partnerships for girls’ education so that Southern African countries
can work together in achieving their EFA targets;
Expected out-comes
- Shared understanding
and appreciation of the extent and magnitude of violence against
girls
- Shared commitment
to eradication of the problem
- A draft model
national policy and a team to take this forward
- National
plans of action
- Strengthened
partnerships
Contacts:
Everjoice.win@actionaid.org
; +27829246035 or +26391262081
bella@earth.net.zw
+27826106704 or +26391345526
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
TOP
|
