The years 2020, 2021, and 2022 will go down as some of the harshest in the lives of most young girls in Uganda.
As the country buckled under Covid-19 pandemic - induced restrictions, with schools shut, sex abusers descended on teenage girls, rising rate of pregnancies to unprecedented levels in the country. Media reports of many young girls conceiving became especially common during the lockdown period.
"Moroto district registers 6,000 cases of teenage pregnancies during lockdown", screamed one of the many headlines in the press.
The extended duration children were out of school and laxity on the part of parents during the Covid-19 lockdown period could be to blame. Based on the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) surveys conducted during the pandemic, although nearly all households had children going to school before the lockdown, during the Covid pandemic, only about 60 per cent of the families with learners reported any engagement in any form of learning.
Given the population of 15.3 million children aged 6-18 years, this indicates that an estimated 6.4 million children did not receive any learning at one time during the lockdown. These children receiving no education meant higher potential to drop out of school and initiate sexual activities.
Worse still, teacher presence nearly vanished, with only about one out of every 10 learners having contact with a teacher after the lockdown. The general lack of schooling created an unprecedented duration of redundancy, and peer influence set in.
The remarkably high teenage pregnancies registered during Covid-19 have implications for the healthcare and aspirations of the adolescents affected. Concerning health, adolescent pregnancies are associated with a higher likelihood of death due to complications related to childbirth.
Adolescent girls aged 15-19 years account for 12.7 per cent of maternal deaths within 42 days of childbirth. Fistula is another potential health outcome of teenage pregnancy. Teenage pregnancies are associated with a higher likelihood of having a C-section birth -- especially after the onset of labour pains.
Finally, apart from pregnancy, early sexual activity increases the risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections -- especially HIV/Aids. Concerning education, teenage mothers have a lower likelihood of rejoining school, which ultimately shatters adolescent mothers' dreams further.
Another significant impact of teenage pregnancy is single motherhood. This is a regular occurrence across sub-regions in Uganda, as teenage pregnancy does not necessarily lead to marriage. Many young girls end up pregnant and bearing children while still in their parents' homes.
Even with lockdown gone, there is a need to step up awareness campaigns via radios, TVs, and newspapers to raise the self-esteem and confidence of children to enable them to speak out and seek necessary services. Also, the awareness campaigns can serve as advertisements for the location of available services.
There is also a need to speed up the adoption of the National Sexuality Education Framework (NSEF) developed by the ministry of Education and Sports in 2018. The framework addresses sexual health, focusing on non-communicable diseases, sexuality, and health-seeking behaviour.
Responding to potential and actual incidents of sexual abuse is a significant hallmark for the NSEF. For the 13-16-year age group, the framework advocates for raising awareness of the importance of post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) against HIV in the event of defilement.
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The draft guidelines by the ministry of Education and Sports on "prevention and management of HIV/Aids, teenage pregnancy and re-entry of child-mother in school settings in Uganda" place significant responsibility on senior women and men in schools -- primarily as the first option for reporting violence experienced at school or home -- for learners who attend school. However, only a few children had contact with the teacher or even a senior woman during the lockdown.
Besides, most rural schools lack an established network of peers to support would-be victims. Consequently, opportunities to report experiences of sexual violence are lost when schools close, especially over prolonged holiday seasons and the general non-availability of senior women in rural schools.
Kasirye is the director of research at Economic Policy Research Centre.
