Uganda's open-door policy has seen a continuous influx of refugees and asylum seekers, now at 1,741,331.
With women and children constituting 79% of the refugee population, female learners in the settlements have asked the government and international community to support more girls with education, writes YUDAYA NANGONZI.
Growing up in Palorinya refugee settlement in Moyo district, Gloria Lae has witnessed firsthand the struggles of young girls in her community. Some of the girls with whom they fled from the conflict in South Sudan in 2016 have been forced into early marriages and others are teenage mothers.
Thanks to her parents who are passionate about education, 18-year-old Lae defied the odds. She is now a senior three student at Idiwa Secondary School in Palorinya. As Finn Church Aid (FCA) recently marked 10 years in Uganda, Lae found herself in a completely different world.
This was her first time attending a meeting in Kampala at Mestil Hotel. When she stepped up to the podium, her community's struggles seemed to rest on her shoulders. Smartly dressed in her school uniform, Lae delivered her remarks with confidence.
"I appreciate FCA for supporting girl child education, peace, and livelihood in Palorinya refugee settlement," Lae began.
"When COVID-19 hit the country, the girls were at risk and everything was messed up. There was an urgent need for schools to be reopened since they are the safest places for girls living settlements." The room fell silent as Lae spoke about hardships faced by young girls in refugee settlements.
"In Palorinya settlement alone, the number of boys in school is higher than that of the girls. This is very alarming. During Covid, many of the girls were married off or became teenage mothers while others were forced to leave school because their families don't value education."
After her four-minute speech, Lae made one plea to the government, donors, and international leaders present: "Please ensure that more refugee girls can stay in school to rewrite their stories."
At Idiwa SS, out of 1,567 learners, only 586 girls are in school. According to Barbara Abalo, a teacher at Idiwa SS, the negative attitude of some parents towards education has impacted school attendance.
"Some girls join primary at nine or 10 years which demotivates them to study. In some communities, girls as young as 11 years are married off, while in other tribes, once a girl is involved in any relationship with a man, she is married off immediately and withdrawn from school instead of counselling her," Abalo said.
She added that teenage pregnancies remain a worrying concern. For instance, in Obongi district, 1,016 cases were identified, with 605 documented within refugee settlements by mid-2021.
SUPPORT TO GIRLS
Lae is now working with FCA to raise awareness about the plight of young girls in settlements. The FCA girl empowerment program comprises girls from single-headed families, orphans, and child mothers. According to the FCA Uganda country director, Wycliffe Nsheka, the program started with 40 teenage mothers but later, 120 girls were registered as members of the empowerment program.
"To date, 184 teenage mothers have re-enrolled in secondary schools out of the mapped 385 school-going age girls," Nsheka said.
He added that the presence of breastfeeding corners for mothers in the various schools in settlements has also enabled teenage mothers to return to school. In his speech, the minister for relief, disaster preparedness, and refugees, Hillary Onek, echoed Lae's plea by asking the donors to extend more funding to refugees.
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"The government highly depends on international agencies but their funding has been dwindling. When we had about 600,000 refugees in Uganda, the UN agencies would spend close to $300m (Shs 1.1tn) per annum on refugees. Today, we have 1.7 million refugees, they are giving us only $130m (Shs 477.8bn)," Onek said.
He added: "I feel the cries of young girls who are not in school but we can only support them with increased funding. What we get from the donor agencies including the World Bank cannot address fully the needs of refugees. The best we can offer refugees is to skill them to find work elsewhere to earn a living."
On the issue of more boys than girls in school, Onek said this stems from the cultural backgrounds of some refugees where "women have no rights for anything including education and are used like tools."
