The Ambassador of the Republic of China on Taiwan, His Excellency Richard Shih, recently presented a cheque amounting to US$400,000 to the President’s Empowerment of Girls Education Project (PEGEP).

Speaking at a presentation ceremony held at the State House, Ambassador Shih expressed his pleasure in making the presentation on behalf of his government.

The Taiwanese diplomat hailed the Gambian leader for the attention he is giving to education.

In receiving the money on behalf of PEGEP, Mrs. Tenengba Jaiteh, Secretary General and Head of the Civil Service, applauded the Taiwanese government for their continued support to the country’s education sector.

PEGEP, which is said to aim at providing free education for girls with a view to increasing their enrolment in schools, is the brainchild of President Jammeh.

On 7 July 2008, Southern Sudan celebrated its annual Girls’ Education Day, an opportunity to acknowledge achievements in girls’ enrollment and galvanize action to close the gender gap in education.

This year celebrations were focused in the Lakes State capital of Rumbek where thousands of school children gathered in the town’s Freedom Square. The event, which was attended by representatives of the Government of Southern Sudan, Ministers of Education from all ten States, United Nations and NGO partners, was presided over by the Governor of Lakes State, H.E. Daniel Awet Akot and the Minister of Education, Science and Technology of the Government of Southern Sudan, H.E. Professor Job Dhoruai.

During Sudan’s two decade–long civil war that ended in 2005 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, it was estimated that only 14 per cent of students enrolled in primary school were girls. In April 2006 the ‘Go to School’ initiative, a major campaign to rebuild the education system and bring 1.6 million children back to the classroom, was launched by the Government of Southern Sudan with UNICEF support. Significant progress has since been achieved with total enrolment currently at approximately 1.3 million, up sharply from an estimated 343,000 during the war.  It is estimated that 34 per cent of the children attending primary school today are girls.

Despite these achievements, for every one of the estimated 1.3 million children at School in Southern Sudan today, there is at least one other who is not, and the great majority of those who remain out of school are girls.
The ‘Go to School’ campaign has provided a step forward in the drive for Southern Sudan to achieve the second and third Millennium Development Goals: universal primary education and gender equality.

His Excellency Job Dhoruai said, “We need to build on what we have achieved and accelerate the enrollment of girls. It’s a responsibility for all of us and I urge parents and community leaders to do their best. Together we can make a real difference”.
UNICEF believes that girls’ education is the single most important investment any nation can make and the benefits of educating girls are enormous. For Southern Sudan to quickly reverse the worst effects of its two decade war and to achieve economic growth and reduce infant mortality, a substantial investment in education is essential, especially for girls.

The Director of UNICEF Southern Sudan, Peter Crowley said, “By investing in the education of the girls of Southern Sudan we will see the biggest returns. Educated women are less likely to die in childbirth and are more likely to send their own children to school. Healthy, educated, empowered women have healthy, educated and confident sons and daughters and it is children such as these that Southern Sudan needs if it too is to thrive”.
The active involvement of women leaders and role models as champions of girls’ education is critical to bridging the girl child education gap. To accelerate girls’ education, this year UNICEF is focussing on a number of concrete actions to support the Government of Southern Sudan, among them the Promotion and Advocacy for Girls Education (PAGE), a programme that uses community-based advocacy groups made up of youth, women and other opinion leaders to influence communities, parents and community leaders and government to support girls’ education.
   
UNICEF calls for committed investment in girls’ education as a key to Southern Sudan’s stability and development. UNICEF is appealing for $ 15 million for its education programmes in Southern Sudan this year, which will provide the much needed learning materials to keep children coming to school, the training of teachers, construction of permanent schools and vital capacity building.

UNICEF

The trafficking of girls from villages to cities in Nigeria is increasing and the state is powerless to stop the trade, officials told IRIN.

“The business of recruiting teenage girls as domestic help in rich and middle-class homes is booming despite our efforts to put a stop to it”, Bello Ahmed, head of the Kano office of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP), told IRIN.

Girls aged 12-17 are regularly trafficked from villages and brought to the city to work as maids for an average monthly wage of 1,500 naira (US$13) which they usually send back to their parents who are caring for several of their siblings, according to Ahmed.

“Apart from being denied access to education, these girls are in many cases raped and beaten by their employers and this is why we keep a dormitory to rehabilitate them”, Ahmed said.

“Bringing in girls from the villages to the city to work as house helps continues unabated. In fact it is on the rise”, agreed Mairo Bello, head of Adolescent Health Information Project, a Kano-based non-governmental organisation (NGO).

As well as poverty, trafficking in girls and women is driven by the extreme income inequality which exists in Nigeria, and gender inequality. The problem is prevalent all around the country.

The dangers

Saudatu Halilu, a 16 year-old girl who moved to Kano from a rural village to work as a maid, has been a victim of the trade’s dangers.

Saudatu was brought to Kano from Nassarawa State in central Nigeria 10 months ago to work as a domestic help, but she said her master forced her into sleeping with him and threatened to kill her if she told anyone.

“I was too scared to tell my mistress or anyone what happened for fear of what my master would do to me and I did not realise I was pregnant until a medical check after I began to show some signs which attracted the attention of my mistress”, Halilu told AFP.
Poverty

Poverty drives parents into steering their teenage daughters into work as domestic helps, believing the menial jobs would secure better living conditions for their daughters, Ahmed said.

“I had no option but to send Hindu, who is my eldest daughter, to work in the city because we are poor and need money to feed”, said Aisha, a mother of six, who sent her eldest child, 14 year-old Hindu Nasidi, to Kano to earn money. The girl upset her keepers by not washing plates properly and they ground chilli pepper into her vagina as a punishment.

“The money she was paid from the job was very helpful in taking care of her six siblings until the unfortunate incident”, Nasidi said, blaming rising food prices for her decision to send the young girl out to work in the first place.

With Hindu’s job gone the family now ekes out a living from Nasidi’s raffia mat weaving and her husband’s mango and watermelon hawking which do not bring in enough money to buy sufficient food for their six children.

Powerless

Although NAPTIP has managed to stop the practice of teenage girls being ferried in trucks from villages to the cities “like chickens”, Ahmed admitted his agency had failed to stop the trade.

“The more the law enforcement agencies perfect their strategies at stopping the business, the more the perpetrators become more sophisticated in running their trade”, he said.

Lack of legislation to prosecute the traffickers makes NAPTIP unable to take legal action against traffickers even when they are arrested, according to Ahmed.

The Child Rights Act which provides for five year jail terms and US$424 fines for perpetrators of child labour is yet to be endorsed by the northern states’ legislatures because some clauses in it have been found controversial by religious and cultural leaders.

Friction

The Act has been a source of friction between the Nigerian federal government, which has endorsed it, and the northern legislative houses.

“We are disturbed by the trend of using teenage girls as domestic helps which is a form of child labour and we are aware of the provision in the Child Rights Act that deals with that issue”, Abdulaziz Garba Gafasa, speaker of Kano’s parliament, told IRIN.

“However we can’t endorse the Act because of certain clauses that are in conflict with our religious and cultural values; once such grey areas are expunged we will approve it, otherwise we will make by-laws at state level that will deal with the perpetrators of this despicable act.”

Mohammed Aliyu Mashi, who collaborates with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in fighting child trafficking, rejected the notion that there was no legislation to prosecute child traffickers, saying what was lacking was the political will to enforce the law.

“There is provision in the penal code operating in the north which prescribes five year jail terms to life imprisonment to people convicted of child trafficking and child labour”, Mashi said.

“The claim of lack of legislature is just a ruse; it is an excuse to avoid prosecuting offenders because of lack of political will from officials.”

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Mrs. Jallow disclosed that in recognition of the negative effects that violence, or the threat of it, could have on the physical and mental health of women and their psycho-social well-being and cognisant of the gaps that exist in providing information and quality support services to the women and girls who encounter violence, a Consortium of NGOs and partners was set up. This consortium, she explained, is to effectively advocate for the right policies that respect, protect and fulfill the rights of women and girls in the face of societal violence. The consortium consists of ActionAid The Gambia, Gambia Family Planing Association, Gambia Red Cross Society, World View The Gambia, TARUD, UNHCR, UNFPA, MUTAPOLA and SIMA Vocational Training Centre as the Steering Committee.

The consortium, known as Women Won’t Wait Consortium, and a study on women and girls, was launched on Tuesday at the Tango office in Kanifing.

In her launching statement, the Action Aid Country Director, Madam Kujejatou Manneh, said that violence against women is a problem that affects all nations and societies and is of pandemic proportions. She said that women experience violence in their homes, communities, schools, streets, markets, police stations and hospitals.

She revealed that in 2006, her office commissioned a study on violence against women in The Gambia. The findings of the study revealed several socio-cultural factors responsible for violence against women and girls.These, she said, include women’s low self-esteem and the low status accorded to them by the society as well as their low literacy levels. This affects issues of control, ownership, and participation in almost all aspects of development and strategic resources. Their reproductive health problems, she added, remain the leading cause of sickness and death for women of child-bearing age thus resulting in a high maternal mortality rate.

According to her, the vision of the consortium is to have a Gambia in which women claim their right to be free of violence and in which the rights of women and girls and other vulnerable groups within their ranks are respected, protected and enhanced.

Almameh Taal of Worldview The Gambia, thanked Action Aid for their support to the three-year project.

The Forum for African Women Educationalists Gambia Chapter (FAWEGAM) last Friday held a one day bantaba (annual gathering) for students at the Regional Education Directorates, Region One, Kanifing. The gathering, which brought together students from different schools in the region, centred on violence against girls. FAWEGAM is an organisation to support women and girls in acquiring education for development.

In her welcoming remarks, the chairperson Mrs. Emily Foon-Sarr, anticipated that the information shared would be based on practical, real life experiences that will awaken the minds of girls to some of the difficulties they may face in their future lives. It would also however teach the young girls how to be economically independent, self reliant and confident. These, she said are the first step towards shielding oneself from being so easily victimised. She encouraged girls to learn to speak up and report cases of violence.

According to her, years ago violence against women was not given the attention it deserved and was for the most part regarded as an everyday occurrence. This was particularly true because women were subservient and without a voice.

“It is only in recent times that women discovered that by coming together they could gain the strength to enable them to claim their rights in a social and religious set up,” she said. She described the forum as an opportunity to make girls enlightened as to the processes and channels they can access to escape the realities of being the victims of violence.

The resource persons at the bantaba included Mr. Mustapha Drammeh of DOSE’s Gender Education Unit, Mrs. Yamundow Jagne Joof of the Child Welfare Unit of the Gambian Police Force and Mrs. Antoinette Corr Jack the general secretary of the Gambia Teachers Union.

The Monam group of rape survivors in the northern town of Bossangoa in the Central African Republic (CAR) does what it can to keep going, but morale is low and money tight.

"We've been left to fend for ourselves. We get little help from outside. Many of our members have died," the group's chairwoman, Pelagie Ndokoyanga, told IRIN/PlusNews.

Monam, which means "common good" in the Sango language, was set up in 2006 to bring together female survivors of sexual violence committed in 2001 and 2002 amid the mayhem leading up to the most recent of CAR's numerous coups d'etat that brought Francois Bozize to power in March 2003.

As well as providing a forum for solidarity, revenue-generation and wellbeing for women who have suffered gender-based violence (GBV), Monam also aims to combat such abuse, identify its perpetrators and fight against the stigmatisation of women in general and rape survivors in particular. According to Ndokoyanga, several members of the group were abandoned by their husbands after they were raped.
When an HIV testing and counselling centre was set up in Bossangoa in 2005, many of the first HIV-positive cases were the result of rape.

Among them is Nkokoyanga, who also works with the Bossangoa Association of People Living with HIV.

"It's normal to tell relatives when one is infected, it's not a sin," she said when several dozen members of the association met IRIN/PlusNews. "But they are the first to spread the news."

"Nobody has a job here. I have all my certificates but I never get a job because people know I am HIV-positive," she added.

Both organisations would like to enhance their incoming-generating activities such as market trading, but lack of the necessary capital makes it hard to get such projects off the ground.

With UNAIDS estimating CAR's HIV prevalence at 10 percent, with just three percent of HIV-positive adults on life-prolonging antiretroviral therapy, there is a clear and urgent need to scale up HIV education, testing and treatment, but continued armed conflict and insecurity have made this difficult in many areas of the country.

Many rapes, little data

Accurate, detailed statistics about the number of women who suffer GBV in CAR are unavailable. This is partly because of the stigma attached to such attacks, but also because the government barely functions outside the capital and international humanitarian actors have only recently begun working in the country in significant numbers.

In late February 2007, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that "sexual and gender-based violence strikes well over 15 percent of women and girls" in northern CAR.

Such attacks increased during the pre-coup unrest and during rebel clashes in early 2006 and early 2007.

One of the main areas of investigation opened in May 2007 by the International Criminal Court (ICC), following a request by the CAR government, is the "many allegations of rape and other aspects of sexual violence perpetrated against hundreds of reported victims...during a peak of violence in 2002/03", according to an ICC statement.

The court’s prosecutor is also closely monitoring reported incidences of GBV committed after 2005, when two rebellions emerged in the north.

“[Following a failed coup attempt in late 2002] there emerged a pattern of massive rapes and sexual violence perpetrated by armed individuals. Sexual violence appears to have been a central feature of the conflict," the ICC statement said, adding that at least 600 victims of GBV had been identified over the course of just five months.

Those targeted included elderly women, young girls and men, the ICC said.

"There were often aggravating aspects of cruelty such as rapes committed by multiple perpetrators, in front of third persons, sometimes with relatives forced to participate," the statement added, noting that the social impact of such crimes "appears devastating".

Programmes slowly getting off the ground

For now, there is little outside help for those directly affected by GBV. Clients of the Organisation pour la compassion et le développement des familles en détresse (OCODEFAD), a domestic NGO, have given testimony about sexual attacks against them to the Bangui office of the ICC prosecutor.

OCODEFAD was founded by Bernadette Sayo, a secondary school teacher whose husband was killed in front of her in 2002 by DRC rebels allied to CAR's then president Ange-Félix Patassé amid a coup attempt. The gunmen subsequently raped her.

OCODEFAD registered hundreds of women and dozens of men, as well as young children and elderly people, sexually abused during this period of unrest. It was largely thanks to pressure from this organisation and international rights groups that the government in Bangui called on the ICC to open its investigation.

In terms of foreign assistance, one NGO, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), set up a GBV programme in the northern town of Kaga-Bandoro in May 2007, providing free medical care and psycho-social counselling for its clients, raising awareness about GBV in nearby communities and holding discussions with various military groups.

Language, as well as stigma, was an obstacle in the beginning. "It took us a month to get a definition of rape. There's no word for it in Sango," Catherine Poulton, IRC GBV coordinator in CAR, told IRIN/PlusNews.
Since it began, the IRC's programme - which covers households along a 50km stretch of road - has handled 1,040 cases of GBV, dealing with associated problems such as sexually transmitted diseases, trauma and rejection by families.

Another seven GBV programmes are in the pipeline for 2008, involving agencies such as the UN World Health Organization, UNICEF, the UN Population Fund and Comité d'Aide Medicale.

In the case of CAR, where the data is so limited, donors may need to break with the tradition of seeking detailed assessments of a problem before signing their cheques. According to some analysts, one has to assume widespread prevalence; in IRC's experience the data emerged from the programme, rather than vice versa.

PlusNews

Several thousands of women and young girls have endured rape and other sexual violence in the conflict-torn north of the Central African Republic (CAR).

Research suggests that sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) strikes well over 15 percent of women and girls in the region.

Rape cases are being reported in northern CAR on a weekly basis. The most recent reports mention two twelve-year old girls, who were raped while searching for firewood in the bush near their shelter. A local newspaper also described the ordeal of a thirteen-year old girl assaulted earlier this month on her way to sell palm oil at a market. Health workers in the western province of Nana-Mambéré have expressed shock at the increasing number of rapes of women and girls.

“Sexual violence is a disturbingly common feature of the insecurity in the north of the Central African Republic,” said John Holmes, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. “We must ensure that those responsible are brought to justice,” he added.

Aid groups in the country are providing rape victims with medical and psychological care, including HIV testing and counselling. Among 20,000 displaced persons in the north of the country, more than 1,000 rape survivors have been assisted in the last six months. Networks of victims of sexual abuse are being supported by providing small amounts of money for productive activities.

“There is a dire need to expand the programmes that support the survivors of sexual violence and help communities to prevent it in the future,” affirmed Toby Lanzer, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in the country. “The joint [non-governmental organisation] NGO - United Nations aid programme for 2008 includes seven projects extending services to survivors of sexual violence in crisis zones,” he added.

The 2008 action plan for CAR, as outlined in the Common Appeal Process (CAP), asks the international community to contribute $92.6 million in assistance funds. So far this year, some $7.4 million, or close to 8 percent of the amount required, has been received.

The Liberian government has created a special court to deal with not only rising rape cases, but also other forms of violence against women, Liberia’s Information Minister Laurence Bropleh told IRIN.

“The government has agreed to set up this court and the building is being built right now,” he said on 19 March.

During Liberia’s 14 year civil conflict 850,000 people fled their homes and at least 270,000 were killed. During the war the rape of girls and women was widespread. Since peace was sealed in 2003, sex crimes - and impunity for them - have persisted throughout the country.

Although a rape law was enacted in December 2005 which made rape a crime with a maximum of a life sentence for those found guilty, rape cases have continued to rise according to rights groups. Half of reported rape cases are attacks against teenage girls between the ages of 10 to15 years old according to government statistics.

“Unlike other crimes like murder, theft of property, or criminal mischief, the regular courts do not regularly deal with rape or sexual violence cases, either because the complainants are not willing to pursue the case or state prosecutors are busy handling other cases,” a senior Liberian judge who requested anonymity told IRIN

UNMIL Independent Human Rights Expert in Liberia Charlotte Abaka told reporters on 7 March she is “encouraged” by the creation of the new dedicated court. “The undue delay in prosecuting such cases will now be a thing of the past,” she said.

Advocacy effort

Liberia's women rights groups led by the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia (AFELL) had been advocating for the setting up of the special court for two years.

The organisation frequently blamed the slow progress of rape cases through the existing courts for the lack of justice for rape victims.

Liberia’s Chief Justice Johnnie Lewis as recently as October 2006 had rejected calls for the establishment of the court.

“Having such as court has been a dream of AFELL and it is now a reality,” said Zeor Bernard, Vice President of AFELL. “We are now working with the prosecutorial section of the Ministry of Justice to also have a special unit to prosecute sexual and gender based violence cases,” he said.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Liberia has already established the Women and Children Protection Section (WCPS) of the national police dealing with sexual and other abuses against women. Officials there say rape is the crime most frequently reported to the section.

Encouraged

The United Nations Mission in Liberia’s (UNMIL) latest human rights situation report released in November 2007 identified the failure to try cases of gender-based violence as a “challenge to the rule of law and the protection of fundamental human rights” in post-war Liberia.

“The failure of the state to prosecute impacted negatively on the rights of women and girls to equal protection afforded by the law”, the report said.

Liberia’s Gender Based Violence Taskforce head Patricia Kamara who is also the country’s Assistant Gender Affairs Minister told IRIN that the new court was a victory for women rights advocates.

“From what we know the criminal courts have been pre-occupied with cases dealing with other crimes and this new court will surely bring relief to women,” she said.