Education Minister Janet Museveni is dismayed that several Non-Governmental Organizations-NGOs, are disguising themselves as human rights defenders, but instead promote immorality among school-going children.
Mrs Museveni hinted that there is a new global agenda to deliberately promote immorality, which is evidenced in the indecent entertainment performances openly exhibited before children. She says that teams have been dispatched for extensive enquiries, against such practices and that implicated individuals will be apprehended.
She was presiding over the national campaign to address defilement, child marriage, teenage pregnancy and the promotion of positive parenting at Wanyange girls School in Jinja on Thursday. The campaign attracted 2500 students from 37 secondary schools within Busoga sub-region.
Another campaign codenamed True love waits was also launched to encourage students to abstain from sex and focus on their education goals. Mrs Museveni reminded the learners that sexual purity is the main sustainable measure for allowing girls to stay in school and complete their education.
She says that contraception and condom use which are largely promoted by a section of activists end up luring young girls into sexual immorality, without attaining maturity and comprehensive knowledge about how to protect their bodies.
Museveni adds that measures like contraception are only efficient in ending teenage pregnancies, but the victims are exposed to sexually transmitted infections, which in the long run interrupt their study schedules.
UNICEF’s Deputy Country Representative Margarita Tileva says that the UN family in Uganda is dismayed by the challenge of teenage pregnancies and defilement which has since prompted them to liaise with both the education and gender ministries in empowering victimized girls with life skills, which will enable them to be resilient about their future.
The UN Resident Coordinator, Susan Ngongi called upon the government to tighten legal mechanisms against perpetrators of teenage pregnancies and defilement, in a bid to tame the vice among girls. “And for the cases of defilement and gender-based violence, including harmful practices such as child marriages, we need better application of our legal standards in response, in addition to the prevention measures at home and in our social-cultural institution,” she says.
Meanwhile, the European Union ambassador to Uganda, Jan Sadek expressed the need for devising safe mechanisms for allowing teenage mothers to access quality education and he retaliated against their commitment to supporting such causes.
