PORT
MORESBY, 6 April 2012 (IRIN) - In the Pacific
nation of Papua New Guinea (PNG) sexual violence against young girls, and the
shame and stigma that follows, is forcing many out of school and others into
early marriage.
A recent study by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF),
one of the country’s main providers of medical and psychological assistance to
survivors of family and sexual violence, showed that from 2008 to 2011, a
significant proportion of patients who received treatment as a result of
violence were children, some under the age of five.
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Photo: Ana Santos/ IRIN
The threat of sexual violence prevents girls in PNG
from attending school
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In the rural settlement of Tari, 31 percent of those
who reported violence were between five and 12 years old. In Lae, the second
biggest city after the capital, Port Moresby, 26 percent were between the ages
of 13 and 17.
Almost half of those reporting sexual violence In
Lae from January 2008 to June 2010 - some 520 people - were under 18 years old.
In Tari, 248 were minors, said Patrick Almeida, MSF’s medical coordinator.
“In both places, in over 70 percent of the cases,
the perpetrators were known by the survivors,” he added.
“It’s really bad,” said Ume Wainetti, head of the
NGO, Family Sexual Violence Action Centre (FSVAC), based in Port Moresby.
Young girls are already disadvantaged when it comes
to education, and the threat of rape and sexual abuse aggravates these inequalities.
As it is, parents generally hesitate to send their daughters to school because
they will just get married and have babies. Boys will carry on the family name
and continue to work,” Wainetti said.
The 2010 UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) Education Digest listed PNG as one of 16 countries
worldwide with “severe” gender disparities. In PNG, boys are at least 10
percent more likely to start the first year of primary school than girls.
Gross enrolment rates in 2009 were close to 82
percent for boys, but only 74 percent for girls, according to the UN Children’s
Fund (UNICEF).
The cost of tuition is one of the main reasons for
the gap, according to UNICEF. In 2009 the government adopted a plan to
gradually phase out school fees by 2015, when it expects to fully fund basic
education.
A
dangerous path
The remote locations of schools have even greater
implication for girls, noted UNICEF. “Some kids have to walk for hours to get
to school and the journey on the way to school makes them vulnerable to attack,
especially for girls,” said Joseph Logha, Department of Education assistant
secretary.
“The experience of sexual violence definitely
affects a girl’s education in terms of being able to stay in school and school
performance,” said Ruth Kauffman, MSF project coordinator at a Family Support
Centre in Lae.
These donor-funded hospital-based centres are
intended to be safe houses and “one-stop shops” for survivors of violence for
medical, psychosocial and legal assistance.
“If a girl is raped, she may be blamed and beaten by
family members. If she gets pregnant, she misses one year of school and may not
be able to go back. Even if she doesn’t [fall pregnant], she’s already a
different person. The trauma makes it difficult for her to concentrate on
school work,” Kauffman said.
In some cases, the girl is married off to the
perpetrator for a “bride price”- similar to a dowry. “Some communities see
marrying her to the offender as a way to make him accountable for his
behaviour, without considering the additional emotional trauma that the child
will suffer,” said Elaine Bainard, UNICEF’s chief of child protection in PNG.
Wainetti said one way of ending a culture of
violence is to change people seeing violence against women as a given. The NGO
has recruited more than 1,000 male volunteers of varying ages nationwide to
receive “gender sensitivity” training.
“Some witnessed violence and did not like seeing how
their mothers were treated,” Wainetti said. “They want to have a role in ending
that cycle, and this is a start.”
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