Sex has always been a tricky topic to discuss in our country due to taboos that surround it. However, it’s time we acknowledge that sex education is important and has to be taught to our younger generation to remove the stigma around the topic.
The Noeo Project is a Malaysian based youth-led group aiming to support the underprivileged youth and promote community-mindedness within our generation. They have started a petition to make sex education compulsory in Malaysia.
This petition demands:
- To make sex education compulsory for government schools
- The MoE to create a set and updated curriculum for all government schools to follow for their sex education classes OR to use UNESCO’s proposed sex education curriculum
Here are some points they feel the curriculum could cover although not exclusively:
- The importance/value of consent in sex.
- Place equal emphasis on the psychological and emotional aspects of sex along with the biological understanding of it.
- To dismantle stigmas/myths/misconceptions regarding sex in sex education classes.
Picture used for illustration purposes only.
“It has been said that the current sex education curriculum is often “vague” and is too technical for students to comprehend.”
- Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia stated “90% of the respondents agree that sex education has not been taught in Malaysians schools and the informal information given by most of the teachers is vague”
- An estimated 18,000 underage girls get pregnant in Malaysia each year.
- “Most teenagers have sex without thinking it will result in pregnancy,” says the founder of Rumah Kitah, a shelter for unwed mothers. “There’s no thorough sex education in school. In secondary school when they teach sex in biology, it’s too technical and academic and not very helpful to understand what happens when you have sex”.
- 35% of Malaysian female youth believe that having sex for the first time does not lead to a pregnancy.
- One in five Malaysians believed that STIs could be transmitted by mosquitoes
- 14 in every 1,000 underaged girls in Malaysia fall pregnant every year. In comparison, Singapore’s rate is four pregnancies for every 1,000 underage girls, and Hong Kong is at three out of every 1,000.
- 45 teenage girls give birth every day.
Speaking to World of Buzz, we asked them what led them to start this petition. They said that they initially wanted to start a petition to criminalize marital rape in Malaysia. However, after seeing how unwilling the Malaysian government is to do this, they felt that a petition to make sex education compulsory in Malaysia was a more viable and realistic option that would still help to reduce marital rape and a range of other issues.
“As the youth of Malaysia we feel that it is our responsibility to speak up and demand for changes that we feel are necessary as these changes will help to shape the lives of our generation.”
If you support this cause, make sure to sign this petition here and educate yourself based on the comprehensive report by The Noeo Project.
Kudos to this group for their noble efforts for a better Malaysia. It’s definitely a cause we should all get behind and lend our voices for!
Also read: What If Sales Of Contraceptives & Extensive Sex Education Can Reduce Baby Dumping?
