A/HRC/4/32/Add.3 page 19 73. The Government’s 2005 Policy Framework for Education, Training and Research advocates affirmative action strategies, calling for the priority construction of schools in areas where nomadic populations live. Pastoralists are now targeted as marginalized groups on the same footing as slum dwellers and children with special needs, but with no regard to their specific cultural contexts. 74. The official languages of teaching are Kiswahili and English. Local vernacular languages are not officially used in the school system, though some communities manage to provide schooling in their own language as well. The Special Rapporteur received a number of reports complaining about the loss of the vernacular language, for example from the Yaaku and the Watta people, with pleas for action to preserve their languages, which they consider as cultural treasures. 75. Most indigenous peoples still lack easy access to primary health care, due to distance, lack of transport and essential supplies, and high costs. Moreover, health facilities are understaffed and distributed unevenly across districts in ASALs. Maternal health care is lacking, infant mortality is high, and the Orma estimate that 30 per cent of their women die during pregnancy and labour. In the absence of public health, people rely on traditional medicine and the Kenyan Medical Research Institute has recommended its legalization. 76. Indigenous communities, as the rest of Kenya’s population, have been strongly affected by HIV/AIDS, though statistical data are lacking. The disease mostly affects poor women, especially in the pastoralist areas where they are excluded from development policies and where certain cultural practices such as initiation rites are conducive to its propagation. 77. Child labour is on the increase among indigenous communities, because domestic herding requires their participation. Orphans and children from poorer households are often hired out, sometimes to commercial herders but also to tea plantations and mining quarries, or as domestic workers. Child labour among indigenous populations has not received the government attention it requires, but ILO and some private organizations have programmes addressing these issues. H. The rights of indigenous women 78. Gender inequalities and discrimination against women constitute persistent human rights violations, and indigenous women stressed that they also face systematic injustices and abuse within their own communities. 79. Female genital mutilation (FGM), though outlawed since 2001, is still practised widely among numerous indigenous communities such as the Maasai, Samburu, Somali and Pokot, as part of the culturally sanctioned rites of passage. Whereas at the national level 34 per cent of women undergo FGM, the percentage in North Eastern Province rises to an alarming 99 per cent. FGM poses serious problems for the physical and mental health of girls and, being a form of gender violence, it is also a major human rights violation. Some organizations have experimented with various means of abandoning the practice in socially acceptable ways. For instance, UNFPA supports the Tasau Ntomok Girls Rescue Centre in Narok, which promotes an alternative rite of passage for pubescent girls, respecting the value of the tradition but rejecting the violence associated with it.