But many countries also still penalize pregnant girls by forcing them to drop out of school. This is of great worry. I also remember vehement community resistence in one country when a teacher was dismissed from school for having impregnated a student. Without job, the teacher had no income to support the girl and her child. Legal frameworks are necessary and important, but they need to be just, take girls' best interest into consideration. And most of all they need to be supported by broader measures to change attitudes and behaviors which see sexual relationships between teachers and as normal or justified.

Plan in West Africa has a broad programme to stop violence at school by supporting children and youth led advocacy efforts. (pls. see my comments in week 1). Ensuring children's protection in their efforts is a critical task for us. While most of the youth groups chose collaborative strategies, in one country a partnering girls group chose to denounce a teacher who had sexually abused girls on the radio. The teacher was removed from the community (but not dismissed) as a result of their efforts. While the strategy chosen by the group was effective, it was also risky and we had to support the group with negotiation work to mitigate potential consquences of their action. This example illustrates the risks of youth led advocacy with, while at the same time demonstrating that there is a space for activism in eradicating school violence against girls. We are including routinely risk analysis in our youth group trainings, but we have to be conscious and ready for the fact that we don't own the groups agenda and that they might decide to chose risky tactics to achieve their goals.

Teachers and Teachers Unions are crucial in combating violence against girls in education. Education International for example has an excellent general code of conduct for teachers which clearly commits members to help preventing and addressing violence in educational settings. At country level, teacher code of conducts provide locally adapted guidelines for members of unions and teachers in general. However, in practice, we experience often that teachers protect other teachers who committed abuse and violence of girls and/or aim to influence parents of victims to ensure that cases are not being brought to justice. In West Africa we have offered teachers' unions to work together on training for members on the topic and hope that this project advances. I believe that it is essential that Unions discuss inside their organizations much more about the issue so that they become the driving forces to eradicate violence. This will require that Unions address gender dynamics within their own rows too if they want to make progress.

Our experience of advocating at country and grassroots level as well as our research work demonstrate that not only gender bias, but also attitudes towards children and childhood in general. Deeply rooted attitudes about corporal punishment being an effective and necessary means of educating children impede progress in the area of eradication of the use of physical violence at school as parents very often (here in West Africa) support its use in educational settings. In regard to sexual abuse, low rates of female teachers and the perception that sexual favors are a form of compensation to make up for low salaries and difficult working conditions perpetuate gender based violence. My very personal experience is though that sexual abuse at schools is a highly political issue which is rarely taken up with the necessary commitment by education authorities in the region. This is because it involves Ministerial staff's own personal attitudes and history, teachers being an important voters group and finally the political influence of teachers' unions who rarely take a strong public position on sexual abuse at school.