“Most of the survivors of gender-based violence that we see in the clinic are young adults,” says Primrose, Youth Coordinator for the Family Health Association (FHA) in East New Britain province.
She has just stepped off stage after delivering a presentation to senior students of Kokopo Secondary School as part of FHA’s school outreach programme, in which she told students that they can reach out to the FHA if they need help, and that violence is never the survivor’s fault.
Primrose and her team of peer educators are hoping to cut physical and sexual violence through their outreach work at schools and communities across East New Britain.
Spotlight Initiative/Rachel Donovan
Primrose, Youth Coordinator for the Family Health Association (FHA) in East New Britain province, addresses senior students at Kokopo Secondary School, Papua New Guinea.
As well as speaking to students at schools, the team from FHA distribute pamphlets and condoms, as part of their efforts to educate the public on sexual and reproductive health, and the prevention of sexually transmitted infections.
“We take part in clinical and community outreach,” she says. “We focus on family planning and especially preventing unwanted pregnancies, so young girls are able to complete their education.”
The team started with 20 peer educators but, over the course of the pandemic, that number dropped to 10. Primrose is now looking to recruit new educators who can join her in promoting the health services on offer at the Family Health Association; providing information on healthy, non-violent relationships; and sharing information on sexual and reproductive health.
“We believe that it’s very important to ensure that young people realize that violence against anyone, whether it’s in a relationship or between any other young people, is not okay,” said FHA Director Michael Salini.
“We need to get that message across to them. So that’s why we engage these young people to do it on behalf of the organization. Young people talking to young people is the most effective way of changing perceptions and values in communities.”
“When peer educators speak to young people, it’s like we’re speaking the same language,” says Primrose. “We’re in the same peer groups and we’re better able to get that message across.”
The approach is important, because older adults often fails to recognize the experiences of young people.
“I, personally, went through that kind of experience with cyber-harassment,” confessed Margaret, a senior student from Kokopo Secondary School. “at that time, none of the teachers really understood it.”
According to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, one in three young people in 30 countries have been a victim of online bullying, with one in five reporting having skipped school due to cyberbullying and violence.
“I think cyber-harassment is one of the issues that older people have a hard time understanding,” says Margaret. “If a young person stands up and speaks to young people in a way that they understand, people will pay attention.”
The Spotlight Initiative in Papua New Guinea
The Spotlight Initiative is supporting the Family Health Association in East New Britain to conduct youth outreach activities that promote positive relationships and connect young people to sexual and reproductive health services.
The study by UN Women and the international humanitarian organization CARE, is based on surveys and interviews with people in 19 regions in Ukraine, conducted between 2 and 6 April.
After more than two months of war in #Ukraine, women & minorities are facing immense hardship when it comes to health, safety & access to food due to the crisis.
New @unwomenukraine & @CAREGlobal report highlights the disproportionate impact of the war on women & minorities.
Women are increasingly becoming heads of households and leaders in their communities as men are conscripted into the fighting, now in its third month.
Address different needs
However, women remain largely excluded from formal decision-making processes related to humanitarian efforts, peace-making, and other areas that directly impact their lives.
“It’s critical that the humanitarian response in Ukraine takes into account and addresses the different needs of women and girls, men and boys, including those that are furthest left behind,” said Sima Bahous, Executive Director at UN Women.
The Rapid Gender Analysis found the war’s impacts are particularly disproportionate for internally displaced people and marginalized groups, such as female-headed households, the Roma community, people with disabilities, and persons who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex or asexual (LGBTQIA+).
Many Roma reported experiencing severe discrimination, both in their daily struggle and in access to humanitarian aid.
Unpaid care burden
Gender roles are also changing. While many men have become unemployed or have been called up to serve in the armed forces, women have taken on new roles and multiple jobs to make up for lost household income.
Women’s unpaid care burden has increased significantly, due to the Russian invasion, with schools closed, as well as high demand for volunteer work, and the absence of men at the front.
Women and girls also highlighted poor access to healthcare services, especially for survivors of gender-based violence (GBV), and pregnant, expecting, and new mothers. They also spoke of rising fears of GBV, and lack of food, especially for those in heavy conflict areas.
Many respondents mentioned challenges and barriers they face in accessing humanitarian aid and services, and around 50 per cent of both women and men indicated that mental health was a main area of life impacted by the war.
Make room for women
The report contains several recommendations for governments, the international community, and others, such as prioritizing women and young people in leadership roles, and share decision-making responsibilities equally.
Priority also should be given to sexual and reproductive health, and to maternal, newborn, and child healthcare, including the clinical care of sexual assault survivors.
‘Decimation’ marks tragic end to school year
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) continues to highlight how the war is having a dramatic impact on the lives and futures of Ukraine’s children.
“The start of the academic year in Ukraine was one of hope and promise for children following COVID-19 disruptions,” said Murat Sahin, the agency’s Representative to Ukraine.
“Instead, hundreds of children have been killed, and the school year ends amid the closure of classrooms due to war and the decimation of educational facilities.”
Education under fire
Since Russia’s invasion, hundreds of schools across the country are reported to have been hit due to use of heavy artillery, airstrikes, and other explosive weapons. Others are being used as information centres, shelters, supply hubs, or for military purposes.
At least one in six UNICEF-supported schools in the east of the country have been damaged or destroyed, including the only “Safe School” in Mariupol.
The “Safe Schools” programme was established with the education ministry, primarily in response to attacks on kindergartens and schools in the Donbas region, where armed conflict has simmered since Russian-backed separatists took charge in some areas in 2014.
A nine-year-old Ukrainian girl holds a drawing of her family as she sits in a learning hub with her mother and cat (in blue basket) in Romania.
A safe space for children
UNICEF said being in classrooms was critical for children affected by crisis, as it provides a safe space and a semblance of normality, and also ensures that they do not miss out on learning.
“Ensuring access to education can be the difference between a sense of hope or despair for millions of children,” Mr. Sahin added. “This is crucial for their future and that of all Ukraine.”
Amid the conflict, UNICEF and partners are working to provide as many children as possible with safe and appropriate learning opportunities.
An online education programme for grades 5-11, developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, continues to reach more than 80,000 students displaced in Ukraine.
In the northeastern city of Kharkiv, children have been forced to seek shelter and safety in metro stations. UNICEF-supported volunteers have set up spaces in these locations where teachers, psychologists and sports instructors play and engage children on a regular basis.
Other initiatives include an ongoing digital campaign to educate children about explosive ordnance risk, which has reached eight million users online, while a new online kindergarten platform regularly receives hundreds of thousands of views.
Millions of youngsters have also fled Ukraine for other countries. UNICEF is supporting governments and municipalities to include these children in their national school systems, along with alternative education pathways such as digital learning.
Hadiza celebrates receiving her Menstrual Hygiene Management Kit. The 14-year-old is a member of a Girls’ Club at Dar es Salam camp. The kits remove a barrier to schooling in Chad – where children already face significant difficulties in accessing education. The JRS – ACRA – CELIAF project is funded UNICEF and ECW. Credit: Irene Galera, JRS West Africa
by Joyce Chimbi (lake chad)
Inter Press Service
Lake Chad, May 04 (IPS) – Fourteen-year-old Hadiza smiles as she clutches a purple bag in her hands. Inside the cloth bag is a Menstrual Hygiene Management kit, an essential item that gives her dignity and enables her to continue with school even when menstruating.
Uncomfortable, in fear of being publicly shamed and ridiculed by their peers when they stain their clothes or period blood runs down their legs for lack of hygiene kits, an estimated one in every ten girls in sub-Saharan Africa miss school during their menstrual cycle.
In emergency and crisis settings, such as Lake Chad’s volatile and precarious security situation, young and adolescent girls are generally twice as likely to be out of school and face significant barriers to education.
Lake Chad is home to an estimated 19,000 refugees, 407,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), and 29,000 returnees, according to UNHCR statistics. Conflict-induced gender barriers to education and a lack of menstrual hygiene products and education around menstruation have long compounded difficulties girls face within the education system in Chad.
“When girls have their period, they feel ashamed to go to school. The first time I had my period, I felt scared and thought I was sick,” says Hadiza, who attends Espoir School, explaining that she experienced these emotions even though her mother and grandmother had told her what to expect.
The Girls’ Club at Dibina school, Liwa subprefecture were photographed during an ECW and UNICEF visit to their projects in Bagasola. The project promotes Menstrual Hygiene Management for equal and inclusive access to education in Lake Chad and eastern Logone. Credit: Irene Galera, JRS West Africa
Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the UN’s global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, also funds this MHM initiative. The initiative has included several MHM awareness-raising campaigns, training for schools and communities in the area, and the construction of hygiene facilities, such as toilets, to allow girls to properly manage their periods while attending classes.
“We must break down barriers that keep young and adolescent girls, like Hadiza, from the classroom. This is precisely what Education Cannot Wait is doing through our support of menstrual hygiene management for girls in Chad and other crisis-affected countries. Together with our partners on the ground, we ensure that girls no longer miss class during their period. This is a crucial investment in the education and futures of girls,” says ECW Director Yasmine Sherif. “Only when we remove each barrier so that girls can stay in school and complete secondary education can we build more inclusive, equal, resilient, and prosperous communities.”
“The initiative seeks to break the taboo around menstruation in schools. We have come a long way. Teachers are talking about menstrual hygiene management to their students without embarrassment or shame,” says Denis Codjo Hounzangbe, JRS Chad Country Director.
Girls’ Club at Dar es Salam camp celebrate receiving their Menstrual Hygiene Management kits. The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) with other partners aim to ensure that adolescent girls don’t miss school during their menstrual cycle. Credit: Irene Galera, JRS West Africa
“This Menstrual Hygiene Management intervention includes the establishment of girls’ clubs which are helping break the silence around the issue of menstruation. Targeted girls learn about menstruation, start to speak freely about it, and sensitize their peers on the importance of hygiene management kits for regular school attendance.”
Hounzangbe says distributed hygiene products protect girls from public shame, missing classes, or dropping out of school. Additionally, he states that the impact of sensitization around menstruation in the community is evident.
“Some of the students’ mothers are now able to space their births. Before the intervention, they had no knowledge of their menstruation cycle,” he observes.
The education system in Lake Chad is strained, and the learning environment is challenging. However, there are more than 6,000 refugee and internally displaced students attending local schools now receiving much-needed support in menstrual hygiene management, according to Jesuit Refugee Service Chad.
Targeted recipients include refugee girls, returnees, and indigenous pupils, including girls with disabilities such as 15-year-old Malembe, who fled Nigeria to Chad in 2019 for fear of being attacked by insurgents known as Boko Haram.
Dar es Salam camp, Malembe’s new home, includes 5,772 children, 41 teachers, and 39 classrooms. She says the intervention has improved her and other girls’ quality of life.
Teacher Souhadi lauds the initiative for training teachers in MHM, which he says is critical to building a safe and inclusive environment for all students. He teaches at the Malmairi school, whose 621 students include 360 girls. All six teachers are men.
“There was a girl in the classroom, sitting on the mat. It was during the second break, and we were about to go home. When she stood up, her classmates noticed she was stained with blood,” he says.
“The girl was ashamed and did not want to get back up. I approached the girl to console her. I told her that she should not be ashamed, that she was not the only one having a period and would not be the last one either. That it is natural for all women and girls.”
The teacher finally convinced the shaken girl not to stay home because of her period. The teachers washed the stained mat, and the next day, the girl came to school and has since attended school without fail.
Souhadi asserts that the MHM training was beneficial for all teachers “because we learned to find the correct words to reassure girls that what is happening to them is a natural process.”
Bana Gana, 15, agrees. Menstruation used to prevent her from going to school.
“Before the JRS menstrual hygiene management kit, I had nothing to wear during my period. I just wore a skirt or underwear without any protection,” she recalls.
Against the backdrop of Chad having a very young population, with an estimated 58 percent of the entire population being under 20 years of age, the importance of improving access to education for all children cannot be overemphasized.
IPS would like to thank JRS and Irene Galera, JRS West Africa and Great Lakes Communications Officer, for collecting the testimonials.
Pramila Patten, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative working to end rape in war, was speaking at a press conference in the capital, Kyiv.
Wartime rape can no longer be dismissed as an “inevitable byproduct of war”. It must be recognized by all parties as a crime that can be prevented and punished. https://t.co/6YYFoJJwQH
— UN Against Sexual Violence in Conflict (@endrapeinwar) May 3, 2022
Standing alongside Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, she expressed solidarity with survivors, saying they are not alone.
“My promise to you is that international law will not be an empty promise. Today’s documentation will be tomorrow’s prosecution.And I want you to know that your rights don’t end when wars begin,” she said.
“Women’s rights don’t end when wars begin. Your bodies are not (a) battlefield and must never be treated as part of the battlefield.”
Interventions and assistance
Ms. Patten and Ms. Stefanishyna on Tuesday signed a framework for cooperation that supports the design and delivery of priority interventions in the areas of justice and accountability as a central pillar of deterrence and prevention.
The agreement also addresses comprehensive service provision for survivors, including sexual and reproductive health services, medical and specialized mental health services, legal assistance, and livelihood support.
Responding to a reporter’s question, Ms. Stefanishyna described sexual violence committed in war as “one of the most silent types of crime”, underlining the difficulty of gathering information on exact numbers.
“Today we have started working to gather this information using volunteers, working with medical facilities, and documenting these cases outside the criminal proceedings,” she said, speaking through an interpreter.
Ms. Patten added that “we cannot expect to have accurate bookkeeping on an active battlefield,” stressing she does not wait for hard data and statistics to act.
Services for men and boys
Although sexual violence is mostly perpetrated against women and girls, Ms. Patten has also received reports of cases involving men and boys in Ukraine, which the UN has not yet verified.
“I am working with the different UN agencies to ensure that there are services adapted to the needs of men and boys, because everywhere in many conflict situations, I have observed that there is a lack of services adapted to the needs of men and boys,” she said.
Preventing human trafficking
The framework with the Ukrainian authorities also covers gender-responsive security sector reform, as well as prevention of conflict-related trafficking, amid rising displacement.
More than five million people have fled Ukraine since the war began just over two months ago, generating the fastest-growing refugee crisis since the Second World War, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.
“It is a fact that conflict does exacerbate vulnerability to trafficking, and human trafficking of Ukrainian women can be a dangerous by-product of this conflict-fuelled refugee crisis,” said Ms. Patten, emphasizing the critical need for mitigation measures.
UN Photo/Loey Felipe
Pramila Patten, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, briefs UN Security Council meeting on women and peace and security (file photo).
Sparing no effort
The UN official also responded to questions about “extremely disturbing” reports of Ukrainian women who were raped before being killed. She has met with the country’s Prosecutor General and said there is “solid” forensic evidence of such incidents.
“This is very serious, and the United Nations, through this framework of cooperation that we have signed, will not spare any effort to bring perpetrators to justice,” she said.
Ms. Patten acknowledged that prosecution for cases of sexual violence committed in war comes with challenges, stating it is “never easy”.
She reported on her meeting with several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Ukraine who have shared anecdotal reports.
“One NGO representative was referring to cases where the perpetrator wore a mask, so identification becomes extremely difficult,” she said.
Ms. Patten stated that “whatever reports are surfacing, they can only represent the tip of the iceberg,” highlighting the need to focus on reporting.
‘Never again’
In this regard, she has also held discussions with the Office of the Ombudsman for Human Rights, which could establish “hubs” across Ukraine where people can report cases of sexual violence and also receive medical, psychological and other support.
Having these safe spaces available would also avert the people, who don’t possess the adequate skillset required, interviewing victims, which carries the huge risk of re-traumatization and re-victimizing.
“We have to learn lessons from the other conflicts where this has been the case, with victims interviewed over 10 times, 15 times, with all the inconsistencies in the reports which make their case not tenable in a court of law,” she said.
“Every war, we say ‘never again’. I think this time we have to say, ‘never again” and mean it, and take the necessary action to give justice to these victims of sexual violence.”
The world is watching
The mandate of the UN Special Representative was established by the Security Council more than a decade ago, to tackle conflict-related sexual violence as a peace and security issue.
International human law makes it clear that even wars have limits, said Ms. Patten, and sexual violence is beyond the scope of acceptable conduct even in the midst of combat.
“Wartime rape can no longer be dismissed as an inevitable by-product of war. It must be recognized by all parties as a crime that can be prevented and punished,” she said.
Although deeply concerned about what she called “the emboldening effects of impunity”, Ms. Patten said it was “critical that all actors and parties know that the world is watching.”
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