A Ban on Pregnant Girls Attending School in Sierra Leone Has Been Lifted
By: Jonathan Stormer Pezzi
“On the 27 April 2010 Sierra Leone launched free healthcare for pregnant and breastfeeding women, and children under 5. This mother and baby are part of a crowd of 200 people queuing at 8am for a Children's hospital to open” Photo by Robert Yates / Department for International Development
New York — Five years ago, Sierra Leone’s government instituted a controversial policy banning pregnant teenagers from attending school. After a new administration has entered office, the ban has now been reversed.
Originating in 2010, the policy was implemented in 2015 after the Ebola crisis, which saw a rise in pregnancies among school-age girls. The policy stems from traditional cultural misgivings about pregnant or recent mothers from dedicating their time to pursuing education. Teenage pregnancy is widespread in the country. 36% of all pregnancies in Sierra Leone are among adolescent girls and only 38% of girls are enrolled in secondary schools, according to Human Rights Watch.
The country has other patriarchal tendencies as well. According to Umaru Fofana of the BBC, “Female genital mutilation is widespread, with an equally widespread resistance to stopping it by traditionalists. Any attempt to do so is resisted, with accusations of foreign cultural interference.”
During the Ebola outbreak that ended in 2015, the government closed all schools to impede the spread of the disease. A spike of teenage pregnancies resulted soon after. After the Ebola epidemic ended, many of these girls were not permitted to return to the classroom.
Map courtesy of WikimediaCommons
The fight to end the policy culminated when a Sierra Leonean NGO joined forces with Equality Now and the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa to bring the ban to court last year. On December 12, 2019, a court of the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) ruled the ban was discriminatory and mandated Sierra Leone rescind it. The court also decided that separate schools for pregnant students were also unfair.
The government relented and released a statement in support of the decision soon after, effectively overturning the previous administration’s policy. “We have wasted a lot of time in restricting the potentials of women and girls,” said President Julius Maada Bio.
“My government is focused on and committed to inclusive national development meaning the radical inclusion of every citizen regardless of their gender, ethnicity, ability and socioeconomic or their circumstances,” he wrote in a statement.
International organizations have come out with universal praise.
“This inherently discriminatory ban which was formalized for almost five years now has already deprived too many young women of their right to education, and the choice as to what future they want for themselves. It has now rightly been consigned to the history books,” says Marta Colomer, Amnesty International’s Acting Deputy Regional Director for West and Central Africa
“We now hope that authorities in Sierra Leone will develop strategies to address the negative societal attitudes and stigmatization that pregnant girls have been facing for years. This decision gives also hope to other pregnant girls in Africa who have been stigmatized, discriminated against and, in some countries, also banned from school,” he went on.
Many are concerned with the parallel between the Ebola outbreak and the looming threat of COVID-19. President Bio has declared a year-long state of emergency to fight the virus. The virus has spread to 46 countries across the continent. Sierra Leone confirmed its first case just last week. Schools will be closed as a result, striking fear in some that a new wave of pregnancies will occur with the closures. Although anxieties regarding how the country will handle the virus exist, the current administration is showing no signs of reverting to these old policies. Onlookers hope the government applies the lessons learned from the previous outbreak.