The Sunday Mail
ZIMBABWE has recorded a sharp increase in teenage pregnancies in the last five years with most of the adolescent pregnancies being recorded in rural areas, a trend analysts have attributed to poverty and cultural practices.
According to the latest Zimbabwe Demographic Health Survey (ZDHS) of 2010 to 2011, the fertility rate among teenage girls aged between 15 and 19 increased from 99 per 1 000 girls to 115 per 1 000 between 2005 and 2010.
According to the survey, rural girls start childbearing earlier than their urban counterparts due to poverty, with the fertility rate among rural girls pegged at 144 per 1 000 girls compared to 70 per 1 000 girls in urban areas.
At least 28 percent of the women who had their first sexual encounter before the age of 15 report that the sex was forced against their will, the survey notes. The data also shows that about 24 percent of women aged between 15 and 19 have begun childbearing with the number of teenagers who have had live births rising rapidly with age, from three percent at the age of 15 to 41 percent at the age of 19.
It is further noted in the survey that teenage pregnancies were one of the major causes of maternal and under five mortality in the country, while teenage mothers were more vulnerable to pregnancy-related complications.
“The issue of adolescent fertility is important on both health and social grounds. Children born to very young mothers are at increased risk of sickness and death. Teenage mothers are more likely to experience adverse pregnancy outcomes and are also more constrained in their ability to pursue educational opportunities than young women who delay childbearing,” reads an excerpt from the ZDHS
“Rural teenagers, those with less education, and those in the lowest wealth quintile tend to start childbearing earlier than other teenagers.”
Developmental studies analyst Mr Enock Musara attributed the high teenage pregnancy prevalence to religious, cultural and social practices.
“The rural environment is not friendly to the girl child. It leaves her vulnerable. For example, if in a family there is a boy and a girl and parents are struggling to send both to school, parents often decide to send the boy to school while the girl stays at home. That redundancy will leave her vulnerable to abuse as on most occasions marriage appears to her as her only escape route from her family’s poverty,” he said.
“Cultural and religious practices that condone child marriages are also prevalent in rural areas and that again leaves the girl child more vulnerable to abuse in the form of forced marriages,” he said.
Mr Musara said the best ways to address the issue of adolescent marriages was to educate the young girls on sex and sexuality as well as eradicating gender imbalances between the girl and the boy child.
Gender activists Mrs Vimbai Nhutsve-Musengi added that Government should put in place and ensure full implementation of laws that adequately protect the girl child from abuse.
“Our laws have loopholes. We have often seen people walking free after corrupting young girls. We need strict laws and deterrent punishments against those who abuse children. That way we can be able to change society’s attitude towards teenage pregnancies and get its buy in in fighting the scourge,” she said.
In recent weeks, the country has been seized with debate over the legal age of consent to sexual intercourse with magistrates’ being accused of lowering the consent age to 12 and also giving lenient sentences to paedophiles.
The debate saw Prosecutor General Mr Johannes Tomana being caught up in a storm following media reports that he suggested girls as young as 12 could marry.
