A lot of girls get pregnant while still teenagers. In many cases, most of them were defiled while others were raped by guardians and caretakers, or were just experimenting and weren’t ready for the outcomes. In Uganda, there is a running joke that a lot of girls nowadays would rather acquire HIV than get pregnant since it’s an abomination for a girl to get pregnant before marriage and while still in her parents’ home. Majority of men that indulge in sex with underage girls are older men, some of whom are working, some already married, and some times, some are fellow teenagers who have no plans of settling any time soon.
Here, in most cases, it’s the girl child that suffers. A Lot of them drop out of school, some lose lives during child birth and the few that are lucky to survive that are given a chance to go back to school after child birth, only to face difficulty in trying to fit in again.
Most parents forcefully marry off their underage pregnant daughters to the abusers, who in most cases don’t want to marry the girl because either they already have a wife or they are just not ready to marry yet. But to avoid going to jail, the abuser finds himself submitting to marrying the girl.
The girl is treated as a commodity and her opinion doesn’t matter
Some parents don’t want to think about what their girl child will go through when sent into this kind of marriage, because they are materialistic and are simply eyeballing what the man is going to offer as dowry and compensation. The girl is treated as a commodity and her opinion doesn’t matter during the transaction. Another reason parents take on this decision is to save face before their peers and also save the young ones from the embarrassment and ridicule of the society.
Remember, this is a teenager getting married to a man – an older man in most cases, setting up a scene for a very unhappy and abusive marriage.
Parents, let us protect our children especially the girl child. Like the saying goes, educating the girl child is educating the Nation. This doesn’t mean we leave out the boys unattended to, but if experience has taught me well, the girl child is more vulnerable in society than the male child.
Leave our girls in school, kaleke kasome kanyabo. Let us go back to those days when the community was more responsible towards kids through effort to discipline them, offer them security and mind their well-being. If you see something wrong, don’t shrug your shoulders and walk away. Instead, report the situation with great concern.
I know some of you will say that even security is corrupt, especially when the defendant has some money or is from a well-to-do family, but hey! First report it and we, the concerned citizens, will follow up to the root of the case and justice will be served.
Let us do better to serve and protect our daughters!
Yours,
Nakibuye Aminah
She Space
