India Needs Comprehensive Sexuality Education

Context:

Earlier this month, a man and his minor son were arrested for sexually abusing a five-year-old girl, who was related to them, over six months.

Sexual Assault and Sexual Education:

• National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB): 51,863 cases were reported under The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act in 2021 and 64% of them were of sexual assault.
  • Data show that both male and female children are victims of sexual abuse.
• United Nations: Comprehensive sexuality education is a curriculum-based process of teaching and learning about the cognitive, emotional, physical and social aspects of sexuality.

Existing Challenges

• Ostrich Effect: Several State governments and certain sections of society in India have adopted this approach to comprehensive sexuality education.
  • A cognitive bias that describes how people often avoid negative information is known as the Ostrich effect.
• Traditional Values: Claiming that sex education sexualises children, existing programmes are either not implemented or withdrawn.
• Patriarchy: Patriarchal social structures negatively affect young adults of all genders.
  • Mass media: It often propagates patriarchal values. For example, portraying women as subordinate to men in Bollywood movies.

Understanding Consent:

• Borrowed Concept: The term consent may have been borrowed from English or other Western languages. Consent is the permission for something to happen.
• Significance: Understanding sexual consent is important not only to learn about violation and abuse but also to maintain healthy relationships.
  • For example, the movie Pink is based on the significance of consent in relation.
• Criminalisation of Consensual Relations: The Madras, Delhi, and Meghalaya High Courts along with the Chief Justice of India have asked the government to consider reducing the age of consent.

Well-being and Dignity:

• UN Population Fund (UNFPA): The right to comprehensive sexuality education is a means to empower young people to protect their health, well-being and dignity.
• UN Global Guidance: It recommends starting comprehensive sexuality education from the age of five along with formal education.
• World Health Organization: Better informed young people will be more likely to engage in sexual activity later.
• Need to impart comprehensive sexuality education to parents and caregivers.
• The State Council of Educational Research and Training informed the Kerala High Court that awareness about POCSO would be included in the curriculum from 2024-25.
• According to the UNESCO 2021 Global Status Report on ‘The Journey Towards Comprehensive Sexuality Education’, capacity- building of teachers is critical.
• Udaan Programme: NGO from Jharkhand got mainstreamed into the Education Department, as a model of commitment to scale up comprehensive sexuality education.

Conclusion:

In India, the responsibility of sexuality education is vested with the State governments. Each State has the freedom to develop creative curriculums within the framework suggested by the UNFPA. It is time they did so.

News Source: The Hindu