Failure to prevent and redress persistent gender-based violence in schools operates as a discriminatory deprivation of the right to education for girls. Human Rights Watch called on the South African government and its National Department of Education to develop a national plan of action to address the problem of school-based sexual violence, in broad cooperation with students, parents, teachers, and school administrators. South Africa needs a systematic strategy to address the problem, George said. Leadership at every level is vital to create an education system free of gender bias and sexual violence. Human Rights Watch urged the government to adopt and disseminate a set of standard procedural guidelines governing how schools are to address allegations of sexual violence and explaining how schools should treat victims, and perpetrators, of violence.
Sexual violence is rampant in South African society, also outside the schoolyard.
From 1996 to 1998, girls aged seventeen and under constituted approximately 40 percent of reported rape and attempted rape victims nationally. One of five young women surveyed in southern Johannesburg reported a history of sexual abuse by the age of eighteen. Another recent study investigating sexual violence suggests that there has been a steady increase in the proportion of women reporting having been raped before age fifteen. This is especially marked in younger girls, whose genital tracts are still not fully mature. South African adolescent girls are twice as likely to become infected with HIV as boys, according to government studies.