Tanzanian president, John Magifuli, has been severely criticised for saying that pregnant teens will always be banned from school during his presidency.
“As long as I am president … no pregnant student will be allowed to return to school … After getting pregnant, you are done,” he told a rally in Tanzania last week.
This law has been in existence since the early 1960s. According to a 2013 report by the Centre for Reproductive Rights, over 55,000 Tanzanian schoolgirls in the last 10 years have been dismissed from high school for being pregnant.
The Tanzanian President’s comments were condemned by a coalition of human rights groups stating that the ban is unconstitutional, breaks international human rights conventions and does not reflect public opinion on how pregnant teenagers should be treated.
The collation has organised an online petition calling on the president to ‘let pregnant students complete their education’.
Magifuli has also gone back on the promise that he made in his 2015 election manifesto, which vowed to permit pregnant teens to continue attending school.
Tanzania has one of the highest teenage pregnancy and birth rates in the world. The Tanzanian Bureau of Statistics states that about 21 per cent of Tanzanian girls aged 15 to 19 have given birth.
Campaigners have stated that the large number of pregnant teenagers is due to frequent instances of sexual violence and rape that occur in the country.
Other countries in Africa have lifted such imposing bans on teenage mothers. One campaigner commented: “In Zanzibar, since 2010, girls have been allowed back into school after giving birth as a strategy for reducing the number of dropouts.
“In these countries that offer girls the option to return to school, there is absolutely no evidence of an increase in student pregnancies as a result of young mothers being in school.”
The Coalition of Civil Society Organisations met in Dar es Salaam on Thursday to discuss this issue, and has asked the President to rethink his decision. The coalition has made huge efforts on advocating and stressing the importance of educating girls.
Founder of Msichana Initiative, Ms Rebecca Gyumi, said: "Girls who become pregnant while in school are not criminals, so they shouldn't be denied the right to pursue their dreams."
Tanzania's Demographic Health Survey Data for 2010 shows that among young people aged between 20 and 24, less than 20 per cent of women had graduated from secondary school, compared with 32 per cent of men. The socioeconomic impact of this ban is devastating for the country.
Experts suggest that, rather than condemning the girls, the government should focus on educating the teenagers on sex and trying to prevent the causes of adolescent pregnancies.
“They need to deal with sexual violence in schools, and with what happens to girls in between schools and home,” Somali politician, Jama Mohamed told The Guardian.
"We know that to educate a girl is to build a healthier family, a stronger community, and, over the long term, a more resilient nation," USAID Tanzania's Acting Mission Director Daniel Moore told Reuters.
