Editorial

With a number of initiatives moved swiftly ahead and taut deadlines aimed at delivering important outputs came nearer, World Population Foundation’s Pakistan team spent most part of February ensuring that nothing but the best was delivered! The process of shifting office accommodation to new premises also added to the usual locomotion.

While SRHR Education team endeavored to enhance linkages with relevant government departments to take the agenda of Life Skills education forward, We Act delved upon augmenting reproductive health initiatives in the country under the umbrella of Pakistan Reproductive Health Network in collaboration with the Ministry for Population Welfare (MoPW). Moreover, a number of new staff members joined the WPF fold, providing greater essence to our dynamic team.

As the staff makes itself at home in the new premises amid a number of challenging outcomes to achieve in March, we wish them the best of luck!

LSBE - Formal School Systems

Meeting with delegates of Balochistan Government

A group of delegates from the Education Department of Government of Baluchistan visited WPF office in Islamabad on February 11, 2010 accompanied by the Executive Director of Pakistan Integrated Development Society (PIDS), a local partner of WPF in Baluchistan. This was an orientation visit with the aim to develop good working relationships with government line departments to promote work of WPF in Pakistan. Following suggestions will be explored in the coming months to strengthen the work on Life Skills Based Education (LSBE) in the province:

• Better linkages with Education Department of Baluchistan, which will help in mainstreaming and scaling up of LSBE programme in other districts of the provice.
• The curriculum revision for B.Ed will be an opportunity to integrate Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) in it.
• The elementary colleges for introducing SRHR and LSBE will be followed up with Director Colleges for feasibility and needs assessment accordingly.

RH curriculum for Adult Literacy Programme of NCHD

WPF in partnership with other stakeholders including MoPW and National Trust for Population Welfare (NATPOW) is in the process of developing a reproductive health curriculum for the girls and women enrolled in the National Adult Literacy Programme run and implemented by National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) all over Pakistan. In this regard a meeting was held between all stakeholders to get a briefing on the programme and its implementing strategies in order to come up with a strategy which is not only applicable with such diverse group but is also owned by the respective communities.

Empowering Girls – Transforming Communities

Country Representative WPF, Pakistan and Programme Manager SRHR Education held a meeting with Ms. Yasmeen Sabeeh Qazi, Senior Advisor Packard Foundation and Ms. Kathy Toner on 9 February, 2010 in Islamabad to review the progress and future outputs for the Girls’ Empowerment initiative.

It was agreed during the meeting that WPF will be sharing the baseline survey with Packard Foundation’s grantees inline with the latter’s standard good practices. WPF will also share results with all stakeholders within the target districts by end of the current quarter.

Efforts will also be put in gear to synchronize various versions of the LSBE Module to ensure harmony among all the grantees that would be using LSBE in various projects. It was shared that during the 3rd Annual LSBE National Learning Forum organized by WPF in collaboration with Aahung and Plan Pakistan, a working group was formed to develop ‘Guidelines for LSBE/SRHR Education’ in Pakistan by adopting Sexuality Education Guidelines issued by UNESCO in collaboration with UNFPA and UNAIDS. It was suggested that PF be invited to participate in this working group as well.

Meeting of Pakistan Reproductive Health Network (PRHN) members with Director General Technical, Ministry of Population Welfare

New Staff Members Joined WPF, Pakistan

Pakistan will face a social crisis and cracks, if its leaders failed to invest in youth as having half of its population fall below 20 years of age and 2/3 of its population approaching their 30th birthday. Albeit the youth are passionate believers of education but the poor educational infrastructure further worsening the situation. These findings were brought into public eye by a recently published report of British Council about the youth of Pakistan. The report also calls for investment in youth for a sustainable and just welfare state system to create more opportunities for the development of youth.

The antidote for all these evils is to invest in youth population through quality education, which could aware youth of their rights, roles and responsibilities. Due to illiteracy and poverty the young people, especially girls are prone to many contained and explicit threats including sexual violence, unwanted and unsafe pregnancies, abortions and substance abuse etc.

The ‘coming of ages’ for both male and female are important stage for shaping their ‘self’ and personality and thus required an education to build their life skills. This is because they are uninformed or poorly informed, about the implications of their reproductive behaviors and health risks especially from the anti-social practices. The escalating urbanization and communication and access to internet, TV and mobile phone are shaping and defining sexual behavior of youth, whereas access to reliable sources of information and guidance are still embedded by cultural values and ethics. The cultural lag could be observed in the contemporary scene of youth issues as, physical cultural is improving i.e. sources of communication, excess of etic information through media etc, on contrary the soft culture is lagging behind i.e. illiteracy, lack of emic information due to culturally defined roles and behaviors etc. In order to make it functional, the gap should be bridged by providing culturally appropriate information to youth. This scenario presents a gloomy picture and future of the largest group of Pakistani population, if left un-redressed.

There is a mounting misunderstanding of religion and culture in general; however, religion plays an important role in shaping and defining behaviors of its followers. Sexual education is a phrase, which is taboo for many of Muslims, however, with the increasing debates and discussions of media on sexual behaviors without its contextualization and particularization, it is becoming inevitable to educate youth about their sexual behaviors. It is worth mentioning here that Islam encourages sexual education as mentioned in Hadiths and Quran but it should be age appropriate. Allah says in the Holy Quran "And when the children among you come to puberty, then let them also ask for permission, as those senior to them (in age). Thus Allah makes clear His Signs for you. And Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise." [24:59]. Once a woman came to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and asked about wet dreams, while Prophet (PBUH) was answering Hazrat Ayesha commented that why she is asking question to embarrass them in front of Prophet (PBUH), "There is no shame in knowing one's religion. Ask everything that you do not understand." The Holy prophet (PBUH) said.

The Islamic perspective of sexual education is theoretical and there is no provision of practical explanation, as mentioned by Sheikh Sanusi Gumbi, a prominent religious scholar of Nigeria. Besides, a teacher teaching sex education is not allowed to come in body contact with his pupil as it is forbidden (source: www.islamfortoday.com/sex01.htm). Likewise Pakistani religious scholars also hold up the same opinion that sexual education must be imparted to young boys and girls but owing to the cultural and Islamic ideals, should be in gender segregated environment, as shared by Mufti Munib-ur-Rehman, Chairman Ruyat Hilal Committee during a talk show on Geo TV (The News Dec 16, 2009). In addition the selection of coaches or teachers is another important element as there is a severe risk of exploitation within the pupil-teacher relationship, regardless of belonging to same genders added Dr. Khalid Zaheer, a religious scholar and Dean of social sciences, University of Central Punjab. On contrary culture draw a rigid line of demarcation between elders and youngsters, which need to melt down for the better understanding of sexual needs and rights of youth. Otherwise, youth will go for alternative sources that might pose risk to their sexual health.

Opening up a debate on the issue of sexual education is an achievement of civil society organizations and media working on reproductive health and rights of young people, which was considered a taboo subject for decades quashing its importance and need. It has been learned by the World Population Foundation (WPF) an Islamabad based International NGO working on the rights of young people in Pakistan, that Madaris students are comparatively more aware of their sexual concerns as compare to the students in formal education system, further fortifies that Islam encourages sexual education with defined limitations to avoid its negative affects. According to global monitoring report of UNICEF on Education For All: 2007, 6.463 million Children are out of school, which places Pakistan at number 2 in the world list, while 23.5% of non-school going children is getting education in Madaris i.e. 1.52 million students being enrolled in Madaris. This is what need to be invested in to avail window of opportunity (having largest number of young people), Pakistani government have, till 2030, as reported in Pakistan Next Generation Report by British Council. The international human rights instruments/documents also owing to the fact, asks the state authorities to take measures to ensure rights of the youth.

For instance, Untied Nations Deceleration on Human Rights article 25-b, motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance and UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women requires states to eliminate discrimination against women in access to health services throughout their life cycle, particularly reproductive health is the basic right of women. Likewise, The Convention on All Forms of Racial Discrimination promotes the right to the highest standard of health, including reproductive health in paragraph 5e (IV). The International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, Egypt, 1994) also calls on governments to take measures to promote highest standard of health including reproductive health and rights. Besides, there are many other international conventions and documents, which promote and ensure sexual and reproductive health rights and services e.g. The Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA, 1995) and Beijing +5 (2000), International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) recognizes the responsibility of governments to promote the rights of children particularly article 24, which protects child from sexual abuse and exploitation.

Pakistan is a Muslim country and we could not allow sex education in schools, a cultural perspective with a religious label, since Islam encourage asking what ever you don’t know. The cultural reasons for tagging sex education as Haram is ‘the respect’ value adhered to elders in our culture, which is off course one of the factors for child abuse and sexual exploitation. It is prevalent social value and family norm in Pakistan to respect elders and obey what ever they ask for. The researches also show that most of children are sexually abused by their relatives or family members. Therefore, children should be made aware of the protection of their bodies and rights, as a subject matter of life skills based education. The life skills education must be adapted and contextualized in Pakistani society/culture and be incorporated in curriculum of both religious and formal school system for the uplift of youth.

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