Pakistani village gives girls sex education class

In the village of Johi in Pakistan girls are being given lessons on sex marking a ground breaking event since even publicly talking about sex in Pakistan is taboo and can even be a death sentence.

Sex education is common in Western schools but these groundbreaking lessons are taking place in deeply conservative rural Pakistan, a Muslim nation of 180 million people.

Almost nowhere in Pakistan offers any kind of organised sex education. In some places it has been banned.

But teachers operating in the village of Johi in poverty-stricken Sindh province say most families there support their sex education project.

Around 700 girls are enrolled in eight local schools run by the Village Shadabad Organisation. Their sex education lessons - starting at age eight - cover changes in their bodies, what their rights are and how to protect themselves.

"We cannot close our eyes," said Akbar Lashari, head of the organisation. "It's a topic people don't want to talk about but it's fact of our life."

Lashari said most of the girls in the villages used to hit puberty without realising they will begin to menstruate or they got married without understanding the mechanics of sex.

The lessons even teach the girls about marital rape - a revolutionary idea in Pakistan, where forcing a spouse to have sex is not a crime.

The lessons are an addition to regular classes and parents are told before they enroll their daughters.

None has objected and the school has faced no opposition, Lashari said.

The eight schools received sponsorship from BHP Billiton, an Australian company that operates a nearby gas plant, but Lashari says sex education was the villagers' own idea.

"Our teacher has told us everything that we'll have to do when we get married. Now we've learned what we should do and what not," said Sajida Baloch, 16, staring at the ground.

Some of Pakistan's most prominent schools, including the prestigious Beaconhouse School System, have been considering the type of sex education practised in Johi.

But this initiative of the people of the village of Johi did not go without criticism

Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, the education minister for Sindh province, was shocked to hear of the lessons.

"Sex education for girls? How can they do that? That is not part of our curriculum, whether public or private," he said.

"It is against our constitution and religion," said Mirza Kashif Ali, president of the All Pakistan Private Schools Federation

But Tahir Ashrafi, who heads an alliance of moderate clerics called the Pakistan Ulema Council, said such lessons were permissible under Islamic law as long as they were segregated and confined to theory and classes are conducted by female teachers.