An EU funded programme against homophobic bullying Combating HOMophoBic And Transphobic bullying in schools – HOMBAT has shown the extent of the problem in Cyprus’schools, Nicolas Tryfon, a LGBT activist and former chairman of Accept LGBTI Cyprus told Agenda programme on Radio Active.
He said that there was a lot of bullying of LGBTI pupils in the schools.
HOMBAT is being implemented in four EU countries — Lithuania, Greece, Netherlands and Cyprus and aims to operate as a shield to prevent and deal with homophobic and transphobic bullying in schools. It involves workshops for teachers, patents and pupils so that they can develop the skills do deal with such incidents and in their turn train others, thereby operating as multipliers.
As part of the programme a survey was carried out with the participation of 150 individuals, both on line and with face to face interviews – parents, pupils, teachers, school psychologists and consellors.
Of these, 78.6% said they were heterosexual, 11.4% were gay, 7.1% bisexual and 2.8% did not respond. Eight out of 10 (82.8%) of respondents said that pupils often refer to their peers using terminology such as gay, lesbian or faggot. And 80% said pupils often criticise some of their peers telling them not to behave like girls (when talking to boys) or behave like boys (when talking to girls).
Moreover 62.8% of respondents said that pupils reject or deliberately exclude LGBTI peers from various group activities.
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