{"id":35813,"date":"2019-03-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ready-for-feedback3.com\/shape-history\/fmr\/braywatkins\/"},"modified":"2024-08-28T07:58:47","modified_gmt":"2024-08-28T12:58:47","slug":"braywatkins","status":"publish","type":"fmr_content","link":"https:\/\/www.fmreview.org\/ar\/education-displacement\/braywatkins\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking the silence: sexual coercion and abuse in post-conflict education"},"content":{"rendered":"

For many countries affected by war, education prior to conflict will have already been in a poor state, with a lack of materials and resources, overfull classrooms and low quality of teaching. Conflict will have further exacerbated these conditions, disrupting or even destroying what limited provision was in place. School buildings may have been looted, damaged or occupied, and trained teachers may have fled or been injured or killed, and all this against a backdrop of increased violence and non-functional State-run systems. The challenges of reinstating education in such places are considerable. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, ensuring children\u2019s safety in educational contexts continues to be difficult. Children face multiple risks, such as dangerous journeys to and from school, an increased risk of physical and sexual and gender-based violence from armed groups or members of the community, and peer violence inside the school gates. These issues also need to be considered within a wider context in which corporal punishment is commonly accepted and the role of women and girls as subjects of sexual violence is often normalised.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

A silent issue<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Another form of violence and abuse also affects children in schools but is perpetuated in near silence: sexual abuse and coercion from teaching staff. <\/span><\/span>\u2018Sex for grades\u2019 \u2013 or, as children call it in many places, \u2018sexually transmitted grades\u2019 \u2013 refers to teaching professionals asking children to carry out sexual acts in exchange for regular teaching tasks, such as marking an assignment, or for awarding the grades they need to progress.<\/span><\/span> Sometimes<\/span><\/span> children are asked for money in exchange for these basic teaching tasks; when they are unable to pay, other forms of payment such as sexual favours have to replace financial contributions. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Since 2016, War Child UK has been supporting children in Bangui, in the Central African Republic (CAR), to campaign against these types of abuses in schools. Through a youth advocates project called VoiceMore, children conducted their own research[1]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> <\/span><\/span>with pupils from ten different state schools<\/span><\/span>, finding that high numbers of children reported incidences of this type as common, with students intimidated, harmed and dropping out of school as a result.[2]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Their findings reflect other reports of sexual abuse and corruption in school systems in Africa.[3]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> In 2015 UNICEF\u2019s U-Report programme asked children in Liberia an open question about what their biggest concerns were, and 86% of children responded saying sex for grades was their biggest worry.[4]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> And in 2017 Maastricht University published a report on education in CAR which described the use of violence, coercion and corruption in schools by teaching staff as prevalent and persistent.[5]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Although pockets of reporting exist, this hidden form of abuse has been overlooked in discussions surrounding other forms of violence in and around schools. Perpetrators in places which lack adequate community and State protection systems \u2013 such as in post-conflict CAR \u2013 can act with near impunity. Initiatives like the Safe Schools Declaration[6]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> have helped set standards and guidelines for protecting education in conflict-affected areas, such as banning attacks on schools, but do not extend to these specific types of protection issues that can become prevalent inside schools as a consequence of conflict. Contributing and exacerbating factors are numerous and include:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n