ACTION AGAINST SRGBV Yohannes Benti ETA (Ethiopian Teachers Association)
The reason I am writing this story is to increase awareness of the complexity of SRGBV. My other reason is to let others know that it is possible to measure violence and take strategic action corresponding to the level of violence noticed/ identified. SRGBV requires concerted efforts under the leadership of teacher organizations. I believe that teachers have a primary concern to create conducive learning environments for their students. Teachers’ organizations, education officers, community and local stakeholders, need to understand the difficulties involved in SRGBV and also need to fulfil their social responsibility to act individually and collectively to end violence in schools and violence against women in society in general. Ethiopian Teachers Association (ETA) apart from defending education and members’ rights also deals with student issues based on the principles provided in its articles of association. In other words, ETA is expected to create conducive learning environments for students in general and for girls in particular. School related gender based violence is one among the issues ETA is concerned with in order to create a conducive learning environment for students. School related gender based violence (SRGBV) is such a broad issue that it could be visible and invisible. The challenge is to be able to exhaustively list the types of violence happening in schools and beyond. On the one hand, students do not clearly report the violence that has happened to them. On the other hand, some violence was considered normal since they happen to exist since ancient 51
