The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | A report by the Ministry of Education and Sports under the Uganda Secondary Education Expansion Project (USEEP) has revealed that girls in secondary schools are suffering from more sexual and other forms of violence than boys.
Violence against children includes all forms of violence like sexual, economic, emotional, physical, and child labour, and these are either perpetrated by parents or other caregivers, peers, partners, teachers or strangers.
The information was released during the dissemination of the National violence against children baseline survey report for the safety and protection of Children under the Uganda Secondary Education Expansion Project (USEEP).
The findings were presented by Ronald Kabungha, the Safeguard social assistant under the USEEP project at the Ministry of Education.
The report has accused parents and guardians, relatives, teachers and school administrators, community members, peers and friends as key perpetrators of violence against children, with 30% of all forms of violence attributed to fellow students, 27% of physical violence by teachers and 85% of economic violence is linked to parents.
The report further states that in secondary schools, 43% of sexual violence, 31% of economic violence, 29% of emotional violence, and 29% of physical violence is done on girls, while 61% of physical violence, 31% of economic violence, 20% of emotional violence, 17% of child labour violence is inflicted on boys.
Kabungha notes that the boy children face lower sexual violence than girls both within the school and in the communities, noting that this is caused by a lack of basic needs like sundries to use during their menstrual periods, parental negligence and peer pressure.
Christine Bwailisa a Gender Specialist at Luigi Giussani Foundation says the survey was conducted to bring out key deliverables and indicators of violence against children and one of them is to ensure that a school has two or more protection activities included in their school development plan.
She says the deliverables also focus on having at least five or more teachers trained on elimination of violence against children and social emotional learning.
“This is part of the social emotional learning, we have to ensure that senior man and senior women are actively engaging in child protection activities, and our teams have had one-on-one engagements with the senior women and senior men, and we’ve also had the opportunity through that project to distribute materials to record the cases of violence”.
She adds that the project has seen some learners that had dropped out re-enroll back to school and attributing this to community dialogues and parental engagement expressing optimism that since the enrolment is increasing in schools the government will construct classrooms.
She says from 138 schools (85%) had school dropouts that had returned to school noting that this was short of the 15% target.
“From the 138 schools, a total of 52,723 students, of whom 27,676 (52.4%) were male and 25,047 (48%) were female had returned to school, and this was due to intensive sensitization by the local leaders, NGOs and other stakeholders,” she narrates.
Dominic Mukiiza, the Senior Probation Officer, Ibanda District, says that the main causes of violence against children were peer pressure, poverty, poor parenting, and harmful cultural norms.
The Head teachers of schools were the project has been enrolling commend the initiative that it has helped reduce violence against children in their respective schools.
Enoch Mulindwa, Head teacher, Kyemamba Seed Secondary School, in Lyantonde district says that there had been serious cases of violence against the children in secondary schools, which had led to high of dropout rates but since the survey that had a sensitisation component to both teachers and parents, the enrollment of children enrolling back has increased from 52 students in 2025 to 152 in 2026.
He blames the violence against children on a lack of community awareness and the teachers who haven’t been equipped with the knowledge of child violence.
The USEEP project has a component of construction of infrastructure which tackles the sensitisation of contractors, and their employees on how to manage violence against children and the head teachers commended the initiators of the survey that is doing a great work for schools.
On behalf of the Local government ministry, Tumuheire Ezra, the Mbarara City Senior Inspector of Schools demands that a lot be done in regards with violence against children in schools noting that the many forms of violence against children in schools have led to a drop in the schools enrollments.
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