SEX Education in Pakistan!

Sex education helps people gain the information, skills and motivation to make healthy decisions about sex and sexuality. Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest provider of sex education.

Comprehensive sexuality education refers to K-12 programs that cover a broad range of topics related to:

• Human Development (including reproduction, puberty, sexual orientation, and gender identity)
• Relationships (including families, friendships, romantic relationships and dating)
• Personal Skills (including communication, negotiation, and decision-making)
• Sexual Behavior (including abstinence and sexuality throughout life)
• Sexual Health (including sexually transmitted diseases, contraception, and pregnancy)
• Society and Culture (including gender roles, diversity, and sexuality in the media)

Target audience:

Youth and people living in rural area mostly should be focused.

As they grow up, young people face important decisions about relationships, sexuality, and sexual behavior. The decisions they make can impact their health and well-being for the rest of their lives. Young people have the right to lead healthy lives, and society has the responsibility to prepare youth by providing them with comprehensive sexual health education that gives them the tools they need to make healthy decisions. But it is not enough for programs to include discussions of abstinence and contraception to help young people avoid unintended pregnancy or disease. Comprehensive sexual health education must do more. It must provide young people with honest, age-appropriate information and skills necessary to help them take personal responsibility for their health and overall well being.

Understand healthy and unhealthy relationships. Maintaining a healthy relationship requires skills many young people are never taught – like

• Positive communication
• Conflict management
• Negotiating decisions around sexual activity

A lack of these skills can lead to unhealthy and even violent relationships among youth.

RESEARCH SAY ABOUT EFFECTIVE SEX EDUCATION:

Comprehensive sexual health education works. Research has repeatedly found that sex education which provides accurate, complete, and developmentally appropriate information on human sexuality, including risk-reduction strategies and contraception helps young people take steps to protect their health, including delaying sex, using condoms or contraception, and being monogamous.

A 2012 study that examined 66 comprehensive sexual risk reduction programs found them to be an effective public health strategy to reduce adolescent pregnancy, HIV, and STIs.

Research from the National Survey of Family Growth assessed the impact of sexuality education on youth sexual risk-taking for young people ages 15-19 and found that teens who received comprehensive sex education were 50 percent less likely to experience pregnancy than those who received abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.

Even accounting for differences in household income and education, states which teach sex education and/or HIV education that covers abstinence as well as contraception, tend to have the lowest pregnancy rates.

Risk involvement:

Pakistan is one of the most vulnerable countries in terms of child sexual abuse and sexual health problems all around the world. The number of patients with HIV AIDS is increasing day by day. According to a recent survey conducted by the National HIV Control Program, more than 133,299 people have been diagnosed as HIV positive in Pakistan. However, when it comes to educating people about sex-related issues, it suddenly becomes a taboo. Sex is a word that will instantly make your character questionable if you say it out loud in Pakistan. As such, the introduction of sex education in the Pakistani school system remains a distant dream. But with the increasing number of sex crimes in this country has made Sex Ed necessary. A survey conducted in 2016 showed a 10 percent increase in child sexual abuse rates with at least 11 children becoming victims of sexual abuse every day, out of which 41 percent were boys. According to a report named ‘Cruel Numbers 2016’, nearly 4,139 children were molested. Most of the cases occurred in rural areas.

Sex education is a very controversial issue in Pakistan. You even say the word “sex” and the moral brigade will be on you like flies on a partially rotted dead body. You will hear all sorts of accusations, from people claiming that you are a RAW/CIA agent to calling you anti-Islam and anti-Pakistan shill who wants to destroy the country. During all that outrage, however, we miss the genuine questions:

What is sex education, and do we actually need it?

Possible Solutions:

• Open discussions and debates
• Make it an issue you want to deal with
• Take it to public forum
• Social media power
• Large number of local people in rural areas should be trained
• Make it compulsory in school course
• Strong punishments for short term plans
• Invest on people more
• Ban Hate speech and vulgar content on television

The Government of Pakistan needs to put Sex Education in schools from the primary level. It is ridiculous that foreign companies like BHP Billiton, Australia, are coming forward to give children from rural areas sex education and the Government of Pakistan is still shy about the subject.

This education will give guidelines information about issues related to human sexuality, reproduction and adolescence. This will show young women that they will not have to be embarrassed of their own body. Lessons on conjugal assault will clarify that unwilling marital sex is a crime. Young women will be instructed to shout and fight back if they are touched improperly, in light of the fact that their bodies are possessed by nobody but themselves.

These lessons tell children about their body, and about their sexual health. With information about their bodies and their rights, girls can pick up certainty and strike away sentiments of blame and disgrace pushed onto them by their preservationist man-eccentric culture.

In a nation where open talk on sex is taboo, these lessons are significantly more important and applicable for young girls. It is evaluated that 70 to 90 percent of women in Pakistan have encountered domestic abuse. Women in Pakistan encounter high rates of abusive behavior, in all its forms at home. They have to battle against an equity framework that supports their male assailants. Both law enforcement and government authorities have proven inert towards savagery against women.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report: Positioned Pakistan as 135th worldwide because of the misogyny that prevails here. Pakistan has a background marked by child marriages, honor killings and savagery against women. In spite of the fact that the nation is gaining ground in women’s education, women still have a less portrayal in their own particular government. Some families in rural areas bolster sex education; however, there are numerous others in Pakistan, particularly from the urban areas, who restrict it because of status and religious reasons

 International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education 2018’ released by UNESCO this week in collaboration with other UN agencies is very timely and provides a framework that could help Pakistan to effectively include LSBE in its curriculum.

“The technical guidance that focuses on five to 16-year olds provides a solid base for designing a robust educational framework for different age groups to enhance their knowledge, skills and attitude to deal with the issue of growing up and handle problems of harassment, molestation and rape.

Strategy that can work:

Communication through different platforms:

• Social media is an impact, target youth
• Mainstream media
• Articles
• Making society tolerant and accepting at every level
• Source of entertainment should be defined
• Stakeholders at one table
• Making nation building a priority
• Deliver your message properly
• Found the easiest level to make other understand

Implementation of a program is more important as it will require lot of pre testing. It should be a continuous process of trying and eventually finding a proper way to tackle the issue.

Training is main part in success of any program or campaign. Train and educate more and more people so they can work towards sex education. Call on foreign Pakistani’s as well to deliver their services.

What are the chances of success? Considering the risk element is high and have lot of issues to deal with in Pakistan, chances of immediate success is low but a long term goal can settle the issue. Government and Pakistan as society needs to continuously work on sex education in Pakistan.

Campaign should be spread to masses. More people should start to understand the value and need of time of sex education in country to make it easy and smooth to work towards it.

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