The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family has decided to abolish the ‘sexual human rights education’ project that it has been conducting to form correct values in teenagers next year. There are concerns that gender equality education has continued to retreat since the Yoon Seok-yeol government took power.
Looking at next year’s budget data submitted by Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Yang Kyung-sook on the 6th from the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family decided to abolish the ‘sexual human rights education’ project next year and cut the entire budget. The budget allocated to this project this year is 556 million won.
‘Sexual human rights’ refers to the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of gender and the right not to be victimized by sexual violence. The sexual human rights education project began in 2013 for students with and without disabilities in elementary, middle, and high schools to recognize that they are sexual subjects and to teach them to respect and protect the sexual human rights of not only themselves but also others.
The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family announced that it had decided to abolish the project due to a decrease in demand (number of people eligible for training) and similarity to projects of other ministries. An official from the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family explained, “More than 75% of the subjects of sexual human rights education for children and adolescents with disabilities are people with developmental disabilities, and the Ministry of Health and Welfare is also promoting a project to educate people with developmental disabilities on sexual human rights (and thus scrapping the project).”
Contrary to this explanation from the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, the number of people who participated in sexual human rights education has remained consistent over the past five years. The number of students enrolled in the course increased slightly from 18,022 in 2018 to 18,224 in 2019, but remained at the 17,000 level for three years from 2020 to last year (17,312 students). This means that the number of students has not plummeted enough to eliminate the business.
In addition, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family’s sexual human rights education includes not only students with developmental disabilities but also students with visual and hearing impairments, so if the project is abolished, it will be difficult for students with disabilities other than developmental disabilities to receive sex education.
Jinhee Lee, co-representative of Empathy for Women with Disabilities, said, “There are students with overlapping disabilities such as vision and hearing, so sexual human rights education has been provided differently depending on the type and degree메이저놀이터 of disability.” She added, “Disabled students who experienced sexual violence during the sexual human rights education process. This is also discovered. “It is an education program that guarantees the sexual rights and self-determination rights of the disabled, which have been taboo and restricted, but it is difficult to understand that the project is suddenly abolished just when it was about to become stable over the past 10 years,” he said.
It is pointed out that the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family’s abolition of sexual human rights education is not unrelated to the reality that gender equality education is shrinking under the current administration. Previously, the Ministry of Education announced a curriculum that deleted the terms ‘gender equality’ and ‘sexuality’ in December last year. Additionally, conservative groups are constantly demanding that books related to gender equality and sex education be removed from public libraries used by students.
Do Seong-hee, director of the Iksan Sexual Violence Counseling Center and the Disabled Sexual Violence Counseling Center, said, “Through sex education, students learn that no one should be discriminated against and that active consent must be prerequisite when crossing someone else’s boundary.” He added, “This is a way for them to live as mature democratic citizens.” “It is a basic (basic) quality, but I am concerned that the foundation of a democratic society will be shaken by a decline in sex education,” he said.
Accordingly, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family said, “If there is a request for (education) from a school, we will provide support through ‘visiting violence prevention education’ (an existing project of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family), and we will revise the guidelines so that youth sexual culture centers (located across the country) can also support (sexual human rights education).” “We plan to pursue this,” he said.