As rapes rise in Myanmar, augmented reality could help smash sex taboos

Description: 

"Technology could help Myanmar fight a rise in rape cases, says an award-winning entrepreneur who is using augmented reality to bring sex education to the socially conservative country. The rape in May of a 3-year-old girl at a private nursery has sparked outrage, prompting thousands to take to the streets to demand justice and highlighting a paucity of sex education in the country. It came as the overall number of rape cases in Myanmar surged from 1,100 in 2016 to more than 1,500 in 2018 — nearly two-thirds involving a child, according to local media quoting government data. “The case was obvious evidence that we are lacking sex education,” said Hla Hla Win, a former English teacher who founded the Myanmar-based 360ed, a social enterprise that seeks to revamp education with technology. “It broke the hearts of so many parents but it was also a wake-up call that we can no longer see sex education as a taboo,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Myanmar’s biggest city, Yangon. The 38-year-old Harvard graduate was named one of 40 social entrepreneurs of the year by the World Economic Forum in New York last month for her work in transforming the way hundreds of thousands of students learn in Myanmar..."

Source/publisher: 

"The Japan Times" (Japan)

Date of Publication: 

2019-10-18

Date of entry: 

2019-10-18

Grouping: 

  • Individual Documents

Category: 

Countries: 

Myanmar

Language: 

English

Resource Type: 

text

Text quality: 

    • Good