Lack of resources force refugee girls out of school

Refugees International (RI) has recommended that donor agencies and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) take immediate steps to stem the high drop-out rates among schoolgirls in Congolese and Burundian refugee camps in Tanzania by providing them steady supplies of essential non-food items. In a report released on Wednesday, RI said girls failing to attend secondary school represent an average of 12 percent of the student body. The reasons for a high drop-out rate among girls around the time of puberty, it said, were cultural and financial. They also included a lack of basic supplies such as clothes, soap, and sanitary napkins, it added. "As girls reach puberty they feel they need to be properly clothed to attend school in order to appear decent," it said. Supplies of soap and sanitary cloth had not been delivered to camps in Tanzania for close to one year, until July 2001. The camp's sexual and gender-based violence programme coordinator said there was an increase in girls having sex in exchange for personal supplies, a situation that contributed to the high rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), RI said. It added that in one of the Congolese camps, 87 percent of refugees under 20 years old who tested positive for STDs were female. RI recommended that donor agencies fund UNHCR's Refugee Education Trust and deliveries of soap, clothes, and sanitary cloth. In addition, it suggested that UNHCR set a minimum standard for the percentage of girls completing primary school and ensure a minimum monthly supply of soap to all refugees. To UNHCR and its implementing partners, RI said they should distribute the clothes and sanitary supplies to school-age girls; strengthen gender awareness programmes that promote the status and fair treatment of girls and women, as well as increase support to programmes that work to maintain and increase girls' school attendance. There are some 500,000 refugees in Tanzania. [Refugee International's full report is available on its Web Site: www.refugeesinternational.org ]