Avoiding unwanted pregnancies and preventing sexually transmitted diseases

In South Kivu many school girls do not go back to school after the summer holidays. For various reasons, but in particular, poverty and an inability to pay school fees or early pregnancies. Among girls aged 15-19 years old 22.3 percent have given up their studies as a result of pregnancy or marriage.

The organisation “The Circle of Exchange for Youth Development in the Great Lakes Region” (CEDEJ-GL) decided to organise a series of workshops for adolescent girls in the area during the recent school holidays: “How to avoid unwanted pregnancy and prevent sexually transmitted diseases”.

Abandoning school as a result of pregnancy or early marriage can have a long-lasting damaging effect on the adolescent girls future. The education of girls and young women is essential for the emancipation of women. Studies on this subject prove there is a link between women’s education and the birth rate. Women with higher level of education have fewer children. Education has also a positive influence on the health of their children.

Poverty and lack of sex education are the main reasons that young women get married or become pregnant. Another major cause of unwanted pregnancy is the rapes committed on adolescent girls here in South Kivu by armed groups and government forces.

Pregnancy before the age of 18 involves numerous health risks; the risk to girls aged between 10 and 14 of dying during pregnancy or childbirth is five times higher than the risk to women aged 20-24. Early pregnancies are linked to early sexuality and for adolescent girls, whose bodies are still developing, the risk of catching sexually transmitted diseases spread by HIV and AIDS is increased.

Another consequences of early pregnancies is that mothers will have more children than those whose first pregnancy takes place later. Early pregnancies also sometimes end up with abortion, at least one abortion in ten here in South Kivu involves women aged between 15 and 19. The majority of abortions take place in dangerous conditions, which increases the number of maternal deaths.

The workshops we held this summer are one way to help adolescent girls to avoid early pregnancies. Other possible solutions are abstinence, responsible sexual behaviour (which necessitates young girls being able to negotiate safe sexual relations with their partners), the promotion of male and female contraception, education in human values and giving sex education a more prominent place in the families, the schools and other environments.

In certain districts some adolescent girls did not respond to our invitation because their parents didn’t allow their daughters to take part in such workshops on the excuse that they might adopt wild behaviour, a common myth about sex education.

To sum up, civil programmes and workshops about sex education and the importance of education are essential if the girls of South Kivu are to be able to pursue their education in the same way as the boys.