Teen pregnancy remains major threat for Rwandan girls

By James Tasamba

KIGALI, Rwanda (AA) - At 16, a Rwandan teen identified only as Jose to conceal her identity, learned she was pregnant, more than one month after she missed her monthly cycle.

Like hundreds of thousands of young girls nationwide, she was not able to continue with her secondary school education.

“My aunt banished me from home, saying I was spoiled and I could spoil her children, too,” Jose, now 20, told Anadolu Agency in the Rwandan capital of Kigali. “When my sister found out she was pregnant at the age of 17, she fled home, too, and ran away with a man twice her age,” said Jose, who is now an orphan.

Jose’s aunt decided to banish her because her pregnancy made her “unsuitable” to stay at home. Terrified, she ran away with the help of her boyfriend who later abandoned her for another woman.

She was taken in by an NGO that provides education to thousands of girls in Rwanda. Jose is studying tailoring to create a job to provide for herself and her child.

Jose’s story is not unique as child pregnancies are common in Rwanda, linked partly to growing gaps in parent-child communication, limited access to sexual reproductive health information, and poverty.

A total of 19,832 underage girls got pregnant in 2018, up from 17,337 in 2017, according to official data. And 23,544 children were born to teen mothers in 2019.

“The major issue is the lack of awareness around teenage pregnancy and the impact it has on girl children,” said Jose.

The age of consent in Rwanda is 18, but the legal age for marriage is 21.

- How to address issue

Rwandan gender activist Donatha Gihana, told Anadolu Agency that girls highlight the issue of poverty as a driver of teen pregnancy but it remains questionable.

She wonders whether society should end up with teen mothers in an event where everybody is poor.

“They should be able to cope and remain focused on their life goals, otherwise we can’t allow poverty to remain an excuse even when the girls say so,” she said.

Gihana contends that fathers, mothers, guardians, and the community should play a larger role to address the problem of teenage pregnancies.

“At the end of it all, we might have amazing policies and programs but the household, the family, where this girl comes from, they need to have conversations on sexual reproductive health,” she said. “We cannot stop teenage pregnancy without the roles of the families and community.”

Gihana found cases where teenage girls had babies without their parents knowing they were pregnant -- incidents she described as shocking.

“But how much do the girls know about sexual reproductive health when they are growing up, do they have enough information to know that one is a potential mother as soon as they see their first menstruation period, when they enter into relationships,” she asked rhetorically.

Aflodis Kagaba, the head of Health Development Initiative, a health care advocacy organization, said teens as young as 14 are sexually active and equipping them with knowledge about contraception would be useful if they chose to engage in sexual activities.

- Wide-ranging effect

Gihana, said teen pregnancy has had wide-ranging effects on girls.

“A child giving birth to a child we have seen a number of consequences. From a girls’ perspective, we’ve seen them completely lose confidence. Some have been chased out of their own families, dropped off family health insurance scheme, starvation, malnutrition and some definitely have dropped out of school,” said Gihana.

“For a girl who has given birth, for them to go back into formal schooling it’s not easy, even when a few of them get opportunities of vocational skills training such as tailoring, and catering. To me, the biggest issue is that these girls are denied educational opportunities,” she said.

Suzanne Mukayijore, a member of the Rwanda Parliamentary Network on Population and Development, said families and society covering up men impregnating young girls abets the problem.