Make Every Woman Count
CASE STUDIES Equal Education Rights for Pregnant Girls and Women in Sierra Leone Article 12(1) of the Maputo Protocol underlines State Parties’ responsibility to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women and to guarantee equal opportunities and access to education and training. And yet pregnant girls are often denied their inalienable right to an education through exclusionary education policies. This situation is common across Africa, where teenage pregnancy is also the highest in the world.2155 Pregnant teenage girls face exclusion from formal education because of systems that reason that pregnancy outside wedlock is morally wrong or that pregnant students negatively influence other female students.2156 To this end, tens of thousands of pregnant girl students and teenage mothers are shunned from schools in Africa. In Sierra Leone, teenage pregnancy reached 65% in some regions during the Ebola outbreak, leaving young girls more vulnerable to sexual violence as they stayed home after a school shutdown initiated to reduce the virus’ spread. According to UNFPA, more than 18,000 girls became pregnant during the lockdown.2157 Once schools reopened in 2015, the increased number of pregnant students at schools was evident, and the government declared an official ban that kept pregnant students out of mainstream schools. This exclusion was coupled with psychological torment and degradation of the young women by the school administration. Many pregnant girls voluntarily left school before being found out and expelled.2158 Sierra Leone had the 13th highest teenage pregnancy rate globally in 2017; thus, the ban excluded many girls from education.2159 In 2015, the minister of education, science and technology in Sierra Leone made a public statement that became an official policy. The statement banned visibly pregnant girls from attending school because they would encourage “innocent” girls to do the same.2160 Once the ban was officiated, the government instituted alternative schools for pregnant girls. However, the schools were an extension of the discriminatory policy and offered a limited number of subjects and an inferior curriculum, and were open only three days a week.2161 In May 2018, Women Against Violence and Exploitation (WAVE), the Child Welfare Society, Equality Now and the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa filed a case against Sierra Leone’s government with the ECOWAS Court of Justice.2162 The coalition, under the leadership of Equality Now and WAVE, worked to revoke the government ban,2163 petitioning the Court to revoke the prohibitive policy immediately. The government of Sierra Leone denied every allegation made against it, reiterating its commitment to uphold human rights and prohibit discrimination, and immediately retracted the minister’s statement. The government also claimed to have attempted to accommodate pregnant girls, cognisant of their fragile state, by establishing separate schools. Taking this into consideration, the government of Sierra Leone requested the Court to reject the case filed against it.2164 The ECOWAS Court of Justice found the Sierra Leone government guilty of prohibiting young girls’ access to education and not making sufficient efforts to reduce teenage pregnancy despite its National Strategy for the Reduction of Teen Pregnancies. It also found that the government of Sierra Leone had subjected pregnant students and teenage mothers to a discriminatory school system with an inferior curriculum.2165 In light of these facts, in December 2019 the Court rejected the ban that prevented pregnant students from attending mainstream schools as well as from sitting for exams.2166 The ban was officially lifted by Sierra Leone’s government in March 2020 after being in effect for five years.
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