Because it's a neutral zone, the young men act like regular students, even playing soccer scrimages against members of the opposing gang. This is one of the schools where educators are trying to use a modest form of sex education to reduce teen pregnancy and improve young people's lives. According to a United Nations report, 1 out of every 3 pregnancies in El Salvador is of a female between the ages of 10 and The sex education program, with an emphasis on respect and human rights, also seeks to curb violence β including gender violence β that makes El Salvador one of the world's most dangerous places.
The small Central American country, of about 6. More than 60 percent of females over the age of 15 have been victims of male-perpetrated violence. Those who are victims of sexual violence seldom report their perpetrators for fear of retaliation or mistrust of the authorities; of 4, sexual assault cases of minors in , only ended in a court ruling.
Suicide has become a way out for young women and girls experiencing abuse. Violence in gang-held territories in El Salvador runs deep. It's the elusive, but ubiquitous possibility that something bad can happen if one runs into the wrong person, walks in the wrong street or is born in the wrong neighborhood.
It's also one of the leading causes of migration. Many survivors of sexual and domestic violence continue to flee and request asylum in the United States, even though it has become much harder to gain it on those grounds. A man with kind eyes, he confronted a gang member and former student β despite the risk of getting shot β when he found out one of his year-old students had become pregnant.
He negotiated the girl's return by convincing the young man to let her go in exchange for a bag of groceries every month. As other young girls also got pregnant, he wanted to do something. Given that sex education is taboo in El Salvador, parents did not react well to teachers imparting this information. Studies show that the risk of teen pregnancy increases in areas where education is hard to access. In an effort to address this, the Ministry of Education created a national sex-ed curriculum in and a plan to integrate it in public schools.
