Chilean government urged to promote comprehensive sex education bill
A Chilean advocacy group has submitted an urgent request to Education Minister Claudio Cataldo that urges President Gabriel Boric’s government to promote a comprehensive sex education bill.
The Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation asserts the implementation of a comprehensive sex education curriculum is essential to ensuring all students, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, have access to an inclusive education without discrimination.
The group also argues inclusive guidelines are crucial to promoting sexual and reproductive health and preventing gender-based violence and bullying. “We met with the minister of education to ask him to promote a comprehensive sexual education bill, since it is of utmost importance that children and adolescents have this type of education,” Movilh spokesperson Javiera Zuñiga told the Washington Blade. “In addition, there is a commitment on the part of the state of Chile that was acquired in the Friendly Settlement Agreement before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for the demand of equal marriage, where the State commits itself to generate education policies.” Zuñiga explained that “comprehensive sex education addresses several issues that are not dealt with in Chile today, which have to do not only with sexual orientation or gender identity, but also often have to do with knowing the body, being able to have tools to deal with abuse and also to know about sexually transmitted diseases.
It is a wide range of topics that our children and adolescents today do not have access to know.” The request comes at a crucial moment amid the ongoing debate over sex education in Chile.
