Reports from a UNICEF research found that 65% of females in the Kibera slum in Kenya, the largest urban slum in Africa, have at one point traded sex for sanitary products.

The girls are forced to have sex with older men because it is the only way they can access sanitary products due to poverty and the stigma surrounding menstruation.

The research also reports that 54% of Kenyan girls still have problems accessing feminine hygiene products and 22% of schoolgirls still have to buy their own even though the Kenyan government signed a bill into law last year that says girls in public schools will receive free sanitary towels.

90,000 girls in 335 schools in Kenya now have access to safe and clean facilities because of that bill, but there’s clearly still more work to be done. Andrew Trevett, UNICEF Kenya chief of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, hypothesizes two reasons why girls have to trade sex for sanitary products:

“One obvious reason is poverty – girls and women don’t have the financial means to buy sanitary products. But there is also the issue of supply.

Transactional sex for sanitary items happens because the items are not available in girl’s villages.

In the countryside, girls are faced with no transport and can’t afford a bus fare. In some remote villages, there are no roads and there isn’t a bus service.”

UNICEF found that 7% of women use old cloths, chicken feathers, mud and newspapers in the place of pads or tampons — while some dig a hole in the ground and sit there for days till their period passes.

UNICEF also found that only 50% of girls felt they could openly discuss menstruation at home.

Credit: konbini.com