Fifty nine per cent of girls dropped out of school after the Covid-19 pandemic because they felt they had outgrown schooling, a new report has shown.
The report by the Catholic Church under St Bakhita Partnership for Education project, set out to explore the effects of Covid-19 on the already poor and vulnerable girls, in Kenya, Uganda and Zambia.
One hundred and twenty six girls from 15 different Catholic schools spread across the country were interviewed.
In the findings, the baseline survey showed that while 57 per cent dropped out of school because they were pregnant, 35 per cent stopped going to school because of early marriages.
“The association between Covid-19 and teenage pregnancy was very visible during our research. Closure of schools exposed girls to predators as they were locked up together,” Javilla Guma, BPE chief researcher said.
Guma said many girls engaged in transactional sex due to economic challenges.
Some girls and their caregivers, he said, became extremely vulnerable and hence easily exploited sexually.
He spoke on Monday during a regional conference on child protection problems and solutions in and for Africa, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Food shortage accounted for the highest number of dropouts, at 73 per cent while financial struggles by parents accounted for 57.6 per cent of the school dropouts.
Thirty five per cent of girls who stopped attending school said they did so because of domestic violence.
The BPE is a partnership of the Jesuit Justice and Ecology Network of Africa and the associations of Catholic sisterhoods in the three countries.
Guma said they sought to ensure every girl child receives quality basic education, prioritising the poorest and the most vulnerable.
“Findings from three countries confirm unacceptably high levels of violence against girls. Girls faced various forms of violence. This trend trashed the progress the countries had made in empowering them,” Guma said.
“In some settings, over 70 per cent of the girls said they either had been victims of sexual violence or they knew of a girl that had been victimised sexually”.
In Uganda, it emerged that in Karamoja some parents arranged for suitors to defile their daughters to marry them off.
In Kenya, the majority of the respondents were of the view that before Covid-19, cases of female genital mutilation and child or forced marriages were decreasing in Kajiado, Samburu and Marsabit.
“During Covid-19, the cases of FGM were noted to have increased considerably,” he said.
Bishop Charles Kasonde, the association of member episcopal conferences of East and Southern Africa president, said the immense challenges brought about by Covid-19 made the need for deep reflection on how we care for and protect the most vulnerable in our societies.
“How we care for and safeguard children must be at the heart of that discernment,” he said.
Kasonde said the full spectrum of children’s needs should be addressed during the pandemic and beyond.
“This is the basis of integral human development,” he said.
Edited by Kiilu Damaris
