Remarks at the Regional High-Level Dialogue in Support of the National Campaign to Address Defilement, Child Marriage, Teenage Pregnancy and to Promote Positive Parenting

The Champion and the Leader of the National Campaign, First Lady of the Republic of Uganda and Minister of Education and Sports, Her Excellency Janet Kataaha Museveni

Co-champion of the National Campaign, Vice President of the Republic of Uganda, Her Excellency Jessica Alupo

Co-champion of the National Campaign, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Uganda, the Right Honourable Robinah Nabbanja

Excellencies, Members of the Diplomatic Corps 

Development Partners, UN Colleagues

Honourable Members of Parliament

Officials from Government Ministries, Departments, and Agencies

Civil Society, Cultural and Religious Leaders

Colleagues from the Media

Young People, especially the young girls present!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am honoured to represent the United Nations family in Uganda as part of this first high-level dialogue led by Her Excellency the First Lady and her Co-Champions. Today we come together to address some very specific stresses and challenges that our girl children are going through.

In too many places, including Uganda, we have a problem with teen pregnancy. The pandemic shone a spotlight on this issue, but many of the underlying problems existed well before the pandemic. In Uganda, prior to the pandemic one-fourth of all girls between the ages of 10 and 19 got pregnant. And this already high number became shockingly high during the pandemic, where an average of 1,052 girls were getting pregnant every day!

While the number of teenage pregnancies is on the increase in Uganda, some countries in the region have seen a decrease, including Kenya and Malawi. Analysis found that educational attainment, age at first sex, household wealth, family structure and exposure to media were significantly associated with this decline.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear children,

Pregnancy under the right conditions is a wonderful thing, an act of divine creation. Pregnancy in children is definitely not good and is just violence. None of us would welcome such news from one of our own daughters. While all human beings are sacred, made in the image of the Divine, we as human beings also have to worry about the material dimensions we live in: the needs of the body for food, clothing, and shelter; the need for livelihoods and jobs. 

The cost of teen birth on girls is huge for that child and her family and community. There are medical risks in the pregnancy and birthing process for both the child-mother and child-baby. For instance, infants born to teenage mothers is 55 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared to the 25 per 1,000 born to mothers aged 20 – 29 years. In addition, adolescent girls have some of the highest maternal mortality rates in Uganda because their bodies are not developed enough to carry a pregnancy to term staggering 28% of maternal death occur among young girls 15 to 25 years of age.

There are also clear educational risks for girls who become pregnant in that they may not achieve as much as they could have otherwise. Low educational achievement leads to diminished future life options. When too many of our girls get pregnant, these risks affect our overall development trajectory – negatively influencing our health, education, employment, poverty rates, and other goals.   And in this context, we are all affected.

This is one of those very clear “prevention is better than the cure” cases. In fact, prevention is an investment. It is imperative that we find MUCH better ways of helping our girl children avoid pregnancy. And for those who are already pregnant, we need to help them better take care of both themselves and their children. While it is a duty, we need to look at it as an urgent act of investing in our own future.

Choice

I have sometimes heard the view that girls who get pregnant are bad. It always shocks me when I hear that view. No 10, 11, 15 or 16 year-old gets pregnant out of choice. They cannot knowingly accept the responsibilities of motherhood at that age.  Pregnancy is a consequence of something else, not a deliberate choice.

When one or two children get pregnant, we can say that the families are failing in their protection role. When so many children get pregnant, then we have collectively failed as a society. We need to look at that and deliberately increase the protection offered, not only at the family level, but also within state and cultural institutions.   

And on the issue of choice, too many young girls even more disturbingly get pregnant though really forceful and violent means such as rape. There are too many hair-raising stories of adult men impregnating young girls, sometimes their own family members. According to the Uganda Police Annual Crime Report (2020), there were 13,613 defilement cases reported in 2019 and 14,134 defilement cases in 2020, indicating an increase of 3.8 per cent over the two-year period. We know that this is just the tip of the iceberg and that many cases are not even reported. Therefore, we need protection mechanisms to be in place to protect the rights of adolescent and young people from defilement and gender-based violence.  And when a child is defiled or married off before the age of 19, the perpetrator should be arrested for the law to take its course.

As a society, we are going terribly astray. There is too much violence, and the rules that govern our relationships and are meant to hold our communities together seem to no longer be holding. We need to investigate what is causing this high level of violence and again find ways to reduce it.  Because at this rate, we are not going to have the sustainable societies we aspire towards.

One of the ways to help girls avoid pregnancy is to talk to them. Now, I come from a place very much like Uganda and my household was fairly conservative and probably mirrored the values of many Ugandan households.  We certainly did not talk – much or easily – about sexuality.  I probably got two or three uncomfortable speeches (which said I was blessed to have parents who really tried to do what was right – to the level of understanding that they had at the time; overall, I was a very protected and well-loved girl). But our context has now changed. I will have to adopt a more robust dialogue with my own daughter.

Our social support systems are now weaker than before. The expectations and opportunities have multiplied and so have the dangers. So we can no longer behave like we did 30 or 40 years ago. We owe our children better access to knowledge and guidance. We need to become both brave and competent. Because if we don’t, they will have only their equally clueless friends, social media, and persons who deliberately want to take advantage of them for guidance – to the disastrous consequences we see today in too many places.

I personally think one of the things all stakeholders need to do more of is to support parents to better have these conversations in their households. And since the magnitude of the problem is really at a societal level, we need to support other key duty-bearer in society that come in contact with our children to have such conversations – in schools, health facilities, cultural institutions, etc. Life skills education for children who are in and out of school is an absolute must and implementation will need to be fast tracked.

The Cost of Teen Pregnancy to Uganda

If we don’t tackle this problem more vigorously, we will all pay for it. These young girls of course suffer.

They are robbed of their youth and are required to take on roles for which they are not psychologically or physically prepared.  They pay heavy prices in terms of their health, lost education, employment and other opportunities. So instead of these girls helping us all move forward, they become a cost. Indeed, if no action is taken to end teenage pregnancy, about 64% of teenage mothers will not complete their primary educations.  60% of teenage mothers will end up in peasant agricultural work.  And annually more than 645 billion Ugandan shillings (or more than 180 million US dollars) will be spent by the Government of Uganda on healthcare for teenage mothers and education for their children.[1]

We need to prevent, prevent, prevent. Relying on parents and our institutions being equipped to have those brave and necessary conversations and dialogues that give girls and boys the knowledge necessary to help them avoid the dangers of pregnancy. Constantly teach, reaffirm and model to them their incredible value, make sure their love of self is so so so high, they become their own best friend, and are willing to give their futures the best opportunities available to them.

For the girls we have failed, we need to do everything to reduce the risks to health – both physical and mental. The whole ordeal can be very traumatic. We need to address that. Because traumatized people cannot use their whole brain. Traumatised people lose access to a little part of themselves. If we can help ensure the psychosocial health of our children, we should. We owe it to them and us. We need to rebuild their self-love.

We need to support them to minimise the lost education and employment opportunities they face. We need to help them return to school to finish their educations and employment skills. And on the employment front, we really should be prepared to more deliberately support entrepreneurship, given that many of our young people will have to create their own jobs. We don’t have jobs for them.

We need to help them get the requisite parenting skills also. In so doing we are helping ourselves to grow the economy and raise useful and quality persons that can move our society towards our stated goals.

And of course, we need to engage boys and men in all our efforts – the girls do not get pregnant by themselves. We need to educate boys. We need to ensure that they have opportunities for compelling futures that they are willing to protect.  

And for the cases of defilement and gender-based violence, including harmful practices such as child marriage, we need better application of our legal standards in response, in addition to the prevention measures at home and in our socio-cultural institution.  

Your presence here, Excellencies, is a testament to your collective and personally unwavering commitment, and that of the Government of Uganda, to begin addressing these issues.

The open and frank discussions that I see here today give me hope that we be able to find a better prevention and response formula to this issue of teen pregnancy. That we will help all our girls, all our boys, all our children do us proud. We live in difficult and uncertain times. We will need to give then solid foundations so they are equipped to confidently navigate the global and national challenges we will bequeath to them.

And before closing, allow me in a very special way to thank our three Champions, led by Her Excellency the First Lady, for the leadership and commitment to improving the lives of girls and young women in Uganda.

I also express my warmest thanks to your teams, as well as to the Ministry of Education and Sports, the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, the Ministry of Health, and the members of the organizing committee including the Organization of African First Ladies against HIV/AIDS (OAFLA), UNFPA and UNICEF, for a job well done in organizing today’s occasion. Today’s dialogue is a strong demonstration of our joint commitment as Government and partners to addressing the challenges that young people face, especially adolescent girls.

Thank you.

[1] Source: National Planning Authority (December 2021). The Cost of Inaction: The Economic and Social Burden of Teenage Pregnancy in Uganda. Available at: teen_pregnancy.indd (unfpa.org)