The Violence Against Children and Youth Surveys (VACS) provide important data that can help address barriers to education and inform interventions to improve the school environment that can ultimately lead to improvements in enrolment and graduation rates.

The VACS are nationally-representative household surveys of 13-24 year-olds that measure the magnitude, context, and consequences of sexual, physical, and emotional violence.

Together for Girls and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with support from Global Affairs Canada, analyzed VACS data from 12 countries to understand the association between level of education* and several sociodemographic and violence variables.

With the results of the initial analyses and guided by the input of experts, we conducted a series of multivariable logistic regressions to further explore the relationship between violence and level of education in Honduras, Lesotho, and Uganda.

For the purposes of this blog, we are focusing on the findings from Honduras and key implications for both the country and the field.

Over the past few years, Honduras took important steps to address all forms of violence against children and youth.

In 2017, Honduras became the first country in Latin America to conduct a Violence Against Children and Youth Survey (VACS). At that time, the government of Honduras made a public commitment to take action to end violence against children and also became a pathfinding country of the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children.

Building on the Violence Against Children and Youth Survey (VACS) data, the first-ever National Action Plan to End Violence Against Children and Adolescents in Honduras will be launched in late 2021.

Despite the immense challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Honduras continues to prioritize the education and wellbeing of children, adolescents, and young people.

The Ministry of Education will play a key role in the implementation of the country’s National Action Plan to End Violence Against Children and is also leading efforts to ensure a safe and equal return to in-person learning, which includes addressing learning losses and dropouts due to pandemic-related school closures.

The findings from our analysis of Honduras Violence Against Children and Youth Survey (VACS) data reinforce the many benefits of secondary education and the critical role it plays in interrupting gender unequal attitudes and improving health and economic outcomes for students, particularly for adolescent girls.

However, the findings also highlight potential risks for those attending secondary school and the need to take those unique risks into consideration when designing and implementing violence prevention interventions.

To learn about attitudes toward gender, the Violence Against Children and Youth Survey (VACS) asks respondents if they believe a series of questions about gender roles, such as:

• “Only men, not women, should decide when to have sex.”
• “A woman should tolerate violence to keep her family together.”

To learn about attitudes towards physical intimate partner violence against women, survey respondents were asked if they believe a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife in certain situations, such as if she goes out without telling him or if she argues with him.

Those who attended or completed secondary school in Honduras were more likely to experience certain forms of sexual violence.

After controlling for age, childhood orphanhood, child marriage, and closeness with mother**, adolescents and young people who attended or completed secondary school had significantly greater odds of experiencing unwanted sexual touching or attempted physically forced or coerced sex.

Although the findings show that those who attended or completed secondary school faced an increased risk of non-penetrative sexual violence, we do not know if that violence occurred at home, at work, at school, on the way to school or somewhere else. Additional research is needed to better understand the context of the violence, including location and perpetrators of violence.