UN boss debunks notions on sex education
Gothataone Moeng | Monday May 12, 2014 14:08
He said along with the changes to their bodies, the onset of adolescence brings new vulnerabilities to young people, particularly on their sexuality. “HIV infections remain uncomfortably high, most young people continue to drop out of school due to teenage pregnancies, young people have limited access to sexual and reproductive health services including comprehensive sexuality education,” Pederson told the consultative meeting to discuss the implementation of the East and Southern Africa (ESA) Ministerial Commitment to accelerating access to comprehensive sexuality education for young people in the region.
He stated that a safe passage from adolescence into adulthood is the right of every child. The right can only be fulfilled if societies make focused investments and provide opportunities to ensure young people get skills and knowledge such as sexual and reproductive health education.
Assistant Minister of Health, Dr Gloria Somolekae said the education and health sectors must lead and mobilise their common strengths to develop, plan and deliver age-appropriate comprehensive sexuality education and Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) services that will make decisive changes in the lives of young people. She called for collaboration with civil society and agencies responsible for young people.
“The ESA report of 2013 has identified the school environment as a convenient place to target the youth with the intended intervention that will make a difference in their lives, especially in Botswana where the school retention rate is in excess of 80%, and the number of school years completed being 8.9 out of 12.2 years. The report identified that life skills education curriculum has been infused from primary to secondary levels of education,” she said.
She added that there is need to invest in the future of young people as statistics show that the youth engage in sexual activity at an early age, and are likely to get infections such as STIs and HIV.
“This is evident from surveys done which show prevalence’s ranging between 4.5 and 10.3 in the age range 10- 24 years,” she said. She added that correct knowledge of HIV infection remains low among young people at 42.1%. But the same young people continue to have unplanned and unwanted pregnancies, with a teen pregnancy rate of 9.7% in 2007.
Somolekae urged parents to learn to talk to their children about sexuality. “It is worrisome that in this day and age, there are some parents that are still unable to talk to their young ones on issues of sexuality, citing cultural barrier as reasons. Examples such as these underscore the importance of this undertaking today, to attempt to rectify some of the factors that promote these adverse indicators on the health of our youth,” she said.
The ministers agreed on 10 areas of commitment that include reviewing and amending existing laws and policies on age of consent and protection; initiating and scaling up age appropriate sexuality education during primary school education; and ensuring that the design and delivery of sexuality education and SRH programmes include participation by communities and families.