Protect, not neglect, our girls

Sandra Knight, guest columnist

The potential of a girl is powerful. Girls play a critical role in a country's development and they enhance our capacity, as a country, to solve the most persistent development problems we face today.

According to the girl effect campaign, "The girl effect is about leveraging the unique potential of adolescent girls to end poverty for themselves, their families, their communities, their countries and the world." But to do so, we must create an enabling culture and environment that will empower and not destroy our young Jamaican girls.

Having just celebrated Valentine's Day, The National Family Planning Board would like to declare that we will continue to educate our girls, to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. As we observed Safer Sex Week last week, the protection we seek for our young girls is the protection from predators who seek to lure our young girls to stray into risky sexual behaviours. These include: early sexual initiation, transactional sex, intergenerational sex, poor condom and contraceptive use, and teenage pregnancy.

It is time we become strategic in our approach. It is time we implement measures that will make predators know that their acts will not be tolerated or accommodated. We need to redirect the fear from our young girls to the sexual predators. They are the ones who should be in fear. They should be made to feel unsafe, unwelcome and hunted.

SAFETY BLANKET

We need to provide a safety blanket for our young girls so they know that we support, protect and defend them. So we invite the police, child-advocacy groups, the communities, churches, families and all institutions within our society to come together to support the development of our young girls.

On the other hand, young girls need to take some responsibility for their sexual behaviours, as they, too, are at times predatory and anecdotal, and this behaviour is increasing.

I would like to add that boys have also been subjected to this predatory behaviour from our girls. So our young girls need to be taught how to be ladies, how to value themselves, their intimacy and their sexuality.

Early sexual initiation not only damages a young girl's self-esteem and reputation, but it weakens the future of the country. When a young girl is robbed of her innocence by being forced into sexual activities, sexual acts, prostitution and early pregnancy, the effect is crippling.

Ours is a society with an enabling culture that blames the girl child, the young girl, the adult woman when she becomes labelled as promiscuous and uncontrollable. However, we have not been vigilant enough in our efforts to protect them from the snares of men who prey upon them even before they are of the age to give their consent.

I echo the Nuh Guh Deh campaign implemented by Eve For Life, warning the Jamaican men: "Cradle snatcher, cradle robber... nuh guh deh... end sex with the girl child."

Girls are three times more at risk of contracting HIV than boys. They drop out of school when they become pregnant and their educational goals get significantly delayed or obstructed.

We must protect, not neglect, our young girls!

Dr Sandra Knight is chairperson of the National Family Planning Board. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.