Boys under prioritized as world focuses on girl child-Experts

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | As interventions worldwide are focusing more on needs and promotion of the girl child, experts are calling for policy and other interventions into proper nurturing of boys as they worry that affirmative action for girls is instead hurting boys as they largely remain neglected.

Henry Semakula, a Senior Education Officer in the Ministry of Education says the move by donors to fund activities that promote the girl child have made it very profitable to the extent that everybody is running there. He said as a result while girls are coming out to shine, their boy counterparts are being lost along the way since no one is focusing on mentoring them.

Godfrey Kuteesa who innovated the first Male Mentorship Programme agrees. He says the challenges of boys are stemming right from the family level whereby many culturally known initiatives like their roles at home are no more.

He says while programmes focusing boys at the basic family level are largely absent, even with the pressures of modernity, there are a variety of girl’s cultural programmes that help them grow into responsible beings, something he says is happening partly because there are donor agenda setters who are pushing the female affirmative action.

However, one of the policies that girls in Uganda have benefited from include additional 1.5 point mark to get admitted in University but two weeks ago as the day of the girl child was being marked, activists called for more programmes that help girls have more access to education and protection from other societal pressures like early marriages.

But, both Semakula and Kuteesa argue that as the girl child is promoted, equal action should be directed to the boys for recent research is showing boys to be more at risk of new public health challenges such as drug addiction.

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