What do you think happens when a young girl in a refugee settlement who is out of school and has no one to look after her as everyone in the family is trying to survive day by day, yet this girl also has basic needs that due to poverty are not met?
This is now the common situation whereby: taxi drivers, business men, nationals, married men, and others take the opportunity to coerce and lie to these young girls by providing for them a few basic needs. Such as sanitary pads, Vaseline, one or two cloths, a pair of shoes and end up destroying their lives by impregnating and leaving them alone with their little babies.
However, we have another category of those that get raped by their neighbors, family members, foster parents; and most of these are never reported due to African norms and social beliefs that protrude sex as a taboo and shameful topic so, therefore, silencing girls to share their rape stories. In this case, most parents marry the girls off to the defiler. A child who conceives at home is an abomination and if the parents don’t marry her off, they ask her to leave the house and find herself another home or abort or hide from home until she gives birth and that means no antenatal care, the child gets traumatized and feels abandoned. The worst thing is that even when some of these cases are reported, some leaders get bribed.
Looking at the rate of early pregnancies in the Nakivale refugee settlement nowadays is extremely high and what are we doing for this generation to stop this? It’s high time to raise voices and protect our young girls from getting into this terrible nightmare.
We believe that CHANGE starts with YOU by simply contributing to the cause by supporting, donating and learning more about the program through our website.
Sybille Anny Izere
Entrepreneurship Project Coordinator
Home Away from Home Program.
