Educating youths important to end gender-based violence

SHAH ALAM - Educating youths is important in the fight against gender-based violence (GBV).

White Ribbon Campaign chairperson Judith Loh-Koh said good values that needed to be taught were such as how to protect themselves, speaking up against violence and how to say no to violence.

Injecting these values, she said was important for youths to empower themselves.

"It is important to speak about GBV at a young age, but usually at that age, we would speak about self-protection on how boys and girls can say no to violence.

"This is done to empower themselves and although children did not have a platform to use to express themselves on the issue, they will carry that with themselves until they are older where they can access that space,” she said.

She added that change must be done in the space to free those who felt trapped.

She said the All Women’s Action Society (Awam) was passionate about bringing change and that it has been listening to stories of abuse and understood what it meant to truly hear out concerns expressed by those who have been abused.

"We we want men to step up and say no to violence as when men step up and engage themselves with media, NGOs and other groups, we can start to see change happening,” she said.

Loh said Awam often saw children as the ones taking the first steps towards informing authorities or other parties regarding abuse in a household which was a positive step.

Awam senior admin and operations officer Lochna Menon agreed on the need for healthy discussions between girls and boys and how it must be done in tandem with comprehensive sexual education.

She added that they must be able to convey their emotions and express themselves with the new social landscape that could prove how certain older methods may not be as effective.

“We must teach children to express themselves with their emotions like handling rejection, expressing their unhappiness among others from a young age and efforts on this should be focused on through education.

“Traditional parenting styles were like not talking back to parents and not speak up. But the current social landscape has changed so much.

“Even on the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry's Talian Kasih hotline, children call expressing how lonely they were and they did not know how to express their emotional needs in a healthy way,” she said.

Lochna added that focusing on relationships with children and the future generation were important.

When asked about how the ‘bro code’ among men could potentially be harmful towards men, she said it could be a positive encouragement or a negative stereotype.

“The bro code can be a beautiful thing as it could encourage men towards healthier attitudes amongst themselves and society, pushing each other to strive to become better.

“However, the stereotypes can be harmful like how it interprets violence as a form of discipline rather than with nurture and care for one another,” she said.