Rwanda vows to tackle school sex abuse Published duration 9 May 2013

image caption Only a few Rwandan schools teach reproductive health

Rwanda's education minister has vowed to tackle sex abuse in schools after a report revealed that 43% of surveyed students were aware of other schoolchildren being raped.

Vincent Biruta told the BBC it was of particular concern that teachers were said to be among the worst offenders.

The government report surveyed 2,052 pupils across the country.

It said 1,600 girls in Rwanda had left school because of abuse last year, 500 because they were pregnant.

The report, presented to the education minister last week by the government's Gender Monitoring Office (GMO), said older men, known locally as "sugar daddies", were mostly to blame for the high number of pregnancies reported.

As well as teachers, taxi drivers were amongst the top offenders, it said.

'Tip of the iceberg'

While 43% of students said they were aware of other schoolchildren being raped, 2.6% said they had been raped themselves.

GMO head Aquiline Niwemfura said poverty was probably the main reason for the high levels of abuse.

"Children go to school without transport, for example, without money for lunch and they get temptation from those who have money," she told the BBC.

"The subordination of women to men" in Rwanda's patriarchal society was also a factor, she said.

Of the pupils surveyed 30% were boys and 70% were girls.

"If teachers are responsible for the problems of teenage pregnancies, that is a serious problem as they're supposed to protect them. We're very concerned," Mr Biruta told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

He said the teachers would be "punished administratively" but also urged victims to go to the police.

Katherine Nichol, who works at Plan Rwanda, a non-governmental organisation which promotes girls' education in rural areas, says that the scope of the problem might be even worse than outlined in the report.

"We only know the tip of the iceberg of this issue here in Rwanda and it manifests in many different forms from inappropriate touching to rape to transactional sex, which is often referred to locally in Rwanda as sugar mummies or sugar daddies."

The BBC's Prudent Nsengiyumva in the capital, Kigali, says many abuses go unreported because of the social stigma surrounding them, especially rape.

"I tried to find out where my rapist was and I found out that he had fled to Kenya. So I thought it would be pointless to report him to the police, he would never be captured and I'd end up being ridiculed and ashamed," a 23-year-old woman, who was raped at the age of 19 at her guardian's funeral, told the BBC.

"That's why I kept quiet. When you get pregnant without a husband, you're treated badly and people call you names such as prostitute. When you're a teenager, it's even worse."

Raising awareness about sexual abuse will also be a key issue for the authorities, our reporter says.

Sex education is considered taboo in many families and only a handful of schools have courses on reproductive health on their curriculum, he says.