Fiji’s Educational Curriculum Needs Comprehensive Sexuality Education Now!

FWRM believes that the inclusion of meaningful age-appropriate comprehensive sexual health education (CSE) in our school curriculum is now urgent.

Latest reports of teenage pregnancies published in a country assessment of adolescent pregnancies and motherhood in Fiji has reported that approximately 1,000 babies were born each year to adolescent mothers during 2016-2019, with the youngest mother recorded to be only 13 years of age.

“This is the disturbing reality - early sexual debut amongst younger children has significantly increased. What can we do to prevent them from making decisions that will ultimately change the course of their lives? These children need to learn about bodily autonomy, safe spaces, consent and having respectful relationships,” FWRM Executive Director, Nalini Singh said.

According to the Putting Data and Evidence into Action: An Intersectional Profile of Adolescent Pregnancy and Motherhood in Fiji findings, during 2016-2019 the annual adolescent fertility rate (15-19 years) increased steadily and significantly from 30 to 38 births per 1,000 among mothers of iTaukei children, and from 19 to 24 births per 1,000 among mothers of non-iTaukei children.

FWRM and other women’s groups have continuously advocated for CSE in schools and findings from such studies only prove to us the need for more awareness and information on sexual and reproductive health in our educational curriculums, especially targeted towards our girls.

“Women and girls must be empowered to understand and have access to fundamental information about their bodies. To deny them this knowledge will exacerbate issues of violence and social issues such as teenage pregnancy, poverty and more. We need to unlearn sex being a taboo subject. Our children are being impacted by the decision that we are making to prevent them from receiving information that will help them make informed choices about their bodies,” Ms Singh added.

The continuous call for improved CSE in our school curriculums is part of our ongoing advocacy, especially since it has been a need identified in our spaces for young women and girls.

“We have advocated consistently over the years through national budget submissions, outcome statements from young women-led and girl-led fora and research analysis work. Hopefully, the publication of such data will push stakeholders into more critical thinking on this issue and include CSE for our children,” Ms Singh said.

© Scoop Media