Sexuality Education is Key to HIV Prevention

A couple days before the beginning of the XVII International AIDS Conference, education and health ministers from Latin America and the Caribbean convened in Mexico City to express their commitment to the rights to health and education, as well as the well-being of present and future generations. 

One of the main agreements in this meeting was the commitment to implement and/or strengthen intersectoral comprehensive sexuality education and sexual health promotion strategies, including HIV prevention, which are to be complemented with efforts by the relevant authorities, according to their own responsibilities and attributions. 

Twenty-five years into the epidemic, the role that education plays in the fight against the spread and growth of the pandemic is very clear to all of us. Several studies have shown that people with access to quality sex education are more likely to live their sexuality in a healthy fashion, while teenagers at a low educational level are more vulnerable to HIV infection. 

In Peru, public recognition of this commitment will be a milestone only if it becomes an opportunity for the state and civil society to bring their efforts, lessons learned and experience together in order to make it a reality, and if it is translated into public policies and programs that go beyond governments. Otherwise we will continue asking ourselves, as we now do: What are the costs of the government's putting off and evading, for so many decades, its responsibility to implement a sustained national quality sex education program for students? How many girls, boys, teenagers and young people have been denied the possibility of getting accurate information in order to enjoy their sexuality without guilt or shame? How many teenagers had no access to the information and counseling they needed to prevent unplanned pregnancies? How many teenagers unknowingly exposed themselves to a sexually transmitted infection such as HIV? 

The numbers of teenage pregnancies and HIV infections may be a reflection of the consequences of not having a comprehensive sex education that recognizes all the dimensions of the experience of sexuality; one that respects the diverse ways in which people live their sexuality, is based on a human rights framework, challenges unequal gender relations, and rejects all forms of discrimination and rights violations. 

This call for awareness about the cost of having put off such a decision does not seek to point fingers at those responsible for procrastinating. It is an appeal both to the state and civil society to join in the commitment to design and implement effective, planned strategies with state funds, not just international cooperation financing, and policy provisions that will allow these proposals to go beyond each governmental term and become state policies.