Can sex ed counter rape in Myanmar?

Description: 

"Only a few months ago, Myanmar was shocked with news of the rape of a three-year-old girl who has since been given the pseudonym “Victoria”. Victoria was raped at a private nursery home in May. Then in September, she was able to testify through a video conference and identify her rapist. “When the court showed the girl the picture of the suspects, she was able to point out the individual on the presented picture, and she was so angry seeing these pictures that she stomped angrily at them with her heel,” Victoria’s lawyer was quoted as saying. News of the rape sparked outrage throughout Myanmar and brought attention to the rising number of rape cases in the country. In February 2018, Myanmar’s Ministry of Home Affairs released its previous year’s statistics on rape cases. The ministry reported that rape cases rose from 1,100 in 2016 to 1,405 in 2017, which includes a rise in rapes of adult women from 429 to 508 and rapes of underage girls from 671 to 897. But more than that, the unfortunate tragedy that befell Victoria also helped to highlight the lack of knowledge regarding sex in Myanmar, as well as the urgent need to stop viewing sex education as a taboo topic but as a necessity. Hla Hla Win, a former English teacher who founded Myanmar-based 360ed, a social enterprise that seeks to revamp education with technology, was recently quoted as saying that the case was “obvious evidence” that the country needed to seriously think of allowing its citizens to be exposed to the right kind of sex education..."

Creator/author: 

Sheith Khidhir

Source/publisher: 

"The ASEAN Post" (Malaysia)

Date of Publication: 

2019-10-25

Date of entry: 

2019-10-25

Grouping: 

  • Individual Documents

Category: 

Countries: 

Myanmar

Language: 

English

Resource Type: 

text

Text quality: 

    • Good