Protect rights of the vulnerable to avoid unwanted pregnancies – MOGCSP

The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MOGCSP) has called on stakeholders to help protect the rights of the vulnerable, especially adolescent girls, to curb teenage pregnancies.

Mr Mawutor Ablo, Director of Policy Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate, MOGCSP, said the Ministry and the stakeholders would work to find a strategic plan to sensitise victims and their parents on how to prevent the social canker.

Mr Ablo said this in a speech at the second bi-annual tracking meeting on the implementation of the Adolescent Pregnancy Strategy on Tuesday in Accra.

He said the Ministry had introduced a five-year Strategic Plan to catalyse efforts to address adolescent pregnancy and urged stakeholders to support the implementation to ensure coordinated efforts to mitigate this problem and its attendant consequences such as child marriages.

This, he said, would facilitate the contribution of the youth, especially adolescent girls, in national development.

Girls are too vulnerable to the violation of their human rights, inadequate reproductive health services, education, and subjected to child marriage, limiting the realisation of their full human potential, he said.

"Talk to the young people about sex and let them know the consequences that come with it; the needs and opportunities for boys and girls are diverse during early adolescence as girls entering puberty on average are two years earlier than boys," he reiterated.

Adding that the closure of schools was a threat to the vulnerability of many girls' unplanned pregnancies and other reproductive health challenges and required collaboration and concerted efforts by all stakeholders to safeguard the rights and wellbeing of adolescent girls.

Madam Faustina Acheampong, Head of the Department of Gender, said supporting and encouraging adolescents to stay focused would help raise the country's economic productivity.

She said educating the girl-child to be an asset to the country was one of the greatest achievements.

Professor Stephen Owusu Kwankye, a Consultant, Development of Strategy, urged all parents and stakeholders to support the country's going back to school campaign to reduce teenage pregnancy.

According to him, most teenage girls drop out of school because of teenage pregnancy. Implementing the Strategic Plan (SP), the 'going back to school campaign', would help reduce teenage pregnancies in Ghana.

Prof. Kwankye, who also works with the Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS), University of Ghana, noted that the main goal for the Strategic Plan was to ensure that all adolescents were fully empowered early to prevent unplanned pregnancies.

Madam Abigail Hunu, Programmes Assistant, United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA) said, the law would deal with any man who engaged in any form of sexual intercourse with an adolescent girl with age less than 16 and also parents who gave out their children into early marriages, would equally be dealt with, according to law.

Adding that, it was their responsibility to give every girl child comprehensive knowledge on issues of adolescent pregnancies and reproductive health and right, to acquire the tools of protection against unwanted pregnancies and other hurdles.