In 2006, the UN Secretary General’s report on violence against children noted that many forms of violence occur in schools, including corporal punishment, psychological violence, bullying and sexual violence. According to the latest UN report, gender-based violence in schools is increasing exponentially in Mali, with a 47% increase in 2020 compared to 2019, despite the national and international legal arsenal that the country has developed.

The school environment is supposed to be a favourable environment for the protection and education of children, but unfortunately, like other sectors, the education sector is a victim of bad governance. The school institutions are increasingly indexed and qualified as spaces of intolerance, discrimination and violence of which girls are disproportionately the victims. The situation of SGBV in Mali is far from brilliant, even if it is a relatively taboo subject in which society is not very interested at the moment. Nevertheless, very isolated actions have been carried out since 2016 by the State at the initiative of the Ministry for the Promotion of Women, Family and Children, and some partners, such as MINUSMA.

This is why FEDE proposes to contribute to the change towards the reduction of gender-based violence in schools (GBV), through its present proposal which will focus on psychological and physical violence, verbal violence, and economic violence. This general objective will be broken down into two specific objectives.
Highlight VGMS through information, awareness, communication and training tools. Put an end to impunity for perpetrators of GBV. The project targets six public high schools in Bamako. This choice is justified by the very large number of students in the district’s public high schools and will therefore help amplify the project’s voice and thus promote the achievement of results, including The liberation of the word of many victims through the project’s activities. The reduction of impunity for perpetrators of GBV. To this end, 30 high school girls will be identified per school and will be the direct beneficiaries of the project. Their selection will be done on a voluntary basis. Thus, the 180 girls will benefit from capacity building on GBV in general and on GBV in particular, and from FEDE’s support through their full participation in the different activities of the project in a spirit of inclusion in order to promote their empowerment. In order to make this project sustainable, alert cells composed only of students (girls and boys) and assisted by resource persons (member of the parents’ association / the dean of teachers) will be set up. The members of these alert cells will have a one-year mandate, renewable once. The first members of the cells will be trained and accompanied by FEDE throughout the duration of the project. Thus, the different alert cells will have the mission of transferring the knowledge acquired on the existing texts and procedures to their successors. This ingenious mechanism will allow, for sure, to perpetuate this project, especially since we will also enact simple, clear and consensual rules for the choice of the future members of the cells in order to prevent any conflict around this subject. Also, the inclusion in the internal regulations of the formal prohibition of all forms of gender-based violence and the reinforcement of administrative sanctions against the perpetrators will ensure the sustainability of this action. If the plea to the Minister of National Education and Literacy to include a module on gender-based violence in teacher training were to succeed, this would also strengthen the sustainability of the project. The sustainability of this project depends not only on the alert cells, but also on the measures taken to prevent GBV in the school rules and regulations, which would allow the project to be replicated in other schools. At the beginning of the project, FEDE will put forward its various policies to reassure rights holders and school authorities. These include its policy on confidentiality, data security, child protection, the fight against sexual exploitation and abuse, and its code of ethics. In addition, the focus will be on communication, information, and awareness-raising to get rights holders to join the project. Our project team will conduct several facilitation sessions in each of the target schools in order to make all the issues clear to the various stakeholders, especially the students. This first phase will be particularly important to us, as the success of the entire project depends on it.
Ownership of the project by rights holders will be facilitated by their effective involvement in its implementation. The alert cells, the complaints management committees, of which they are members, as well as their involvement in the production of the documentary film, will contribute to strengthening the inclusive participation of all stakeholders.