© 2014 Marcus Bleasdale/VII for Human Rights Watch
Education is the only key to allow young girls make informed decisions about their lives to improve their social economic wellbeing.
Most adolescent girls in rural areas often succumb to sexual violence and unwanted pregnancies due to a lack of proper reproductive health information.
While Tanzania has made huge progress in enrolling children in primary schools, few girls in rural areas manage to finish their education due to pregnancy.
According to UNESCO, Shinyanga is among the regions with highest dropout rates of adolescent girls due to early marriage and teenage pregnancies.
Local analysts attribute the situation to the lack of a legal framework to deter parents from marrying off their underage girls as well as oppressive traditional customs that undermine girls’ rights.
Activists say parents often use this tactic to marry off their daughters under special dispensation granted by the marriage law.
According to Tanzania’s Marriage Act of 1971, a girl as young as 15- years old can get married with parental or a court consent.
But activists said once married, the girls are often subjected to physical and sexual violence which affects their reproductive health.
In Tanzania, girls face several significant obstacles to education. In addition to gender stereotypes about the value of educating girls, discriminatory government policies and practices undermining girls’ access to education and facilitate underage marriage.
Marriage usually ends a girl’s education in Tanzania. Married or pregnant pupils are routinely expelled or excluded from school.
In the report, HRW (Human Rights Watch-2014) documents how child marriage exposes girls and women to exploitation and violence – including marital rape and female genital mutilation – and reproductive health risks.
It pays particular attention to the ways in which limited access to education contributes to, and results from, child marriage.
Marriage usually ends a girl’s education in Tanzania. Married or pregnant pupils are routinely expelled or excluded from school.
Tanzanian schools also routinely conduct mandatory pregnancy tests and expel pregnant girls.
Human Rights Watch interviewed several girls who were expelled from school because they were pregnant. Others said they stopped attending school after finding out they were pregnant because they feared expulsion.
A 2013 Tanzanian Ministry of Education and Vocational Training Tool Kit continues to recommend conducting periodic pregnancy tests as a way of curbing teenage pregnancies in schools.
The new Education and Training Policy passed by Cabinet in June 2014 is regrettably silent on whether married students can continue with school, although it does make provisions for the readmission of girls after they have given birth and “for other reasons”.
Government use of the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) has a disproportionate impact on children from poor backgrounds and exposes girls to child marriage.
The government of Tanzania does not use the PSLE as an assessment tool, but rather as a selection tool to determine which pupils to join secondary school.
Pupils who fail their exam cannot retake it or be admitted to a government secondary school.
Parents who are financially able can take their children to private schools. But parents whose daughters have failed the exam and who cannot afford private school fees, see marriage as the next viable alternative for girls.
In the long run, Tanzania should take measures to increase access to post-primary education by taking all possible measures to ensure that all children can access secondary education irrespective of their PSLE results.
Many girls HRW interviewed regretted not being able to complete their education and asked that the government take steps to ensure girls who become pregnant or marry while in school are not denied an education. (Credit: Inter Press Service -IPS)
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