UN women call for women empowerment in Uganda
The 2021 survey dubbed Violence in Uganda by UN Women indicates that
girls who did not attend school were much higher likely to experience
sexual abuse by the age of 15 compared to their counterparts in
education.
The same report reveals that adolescent girls and women between the
ages of 15 and 24 represented 42% of all the new cases of HIV in the
same year.
With these challenges, UN women estimates that women and girls will
not achieve full equality with men and boys for another 300 years.
Pauline, however says that women and girls require overcoming several
barriers at personal and society level and that institutions and
communities that can provide contextualized solutions to local
challenges must be put in place.
This according to her will help in combatting teenage pregnancies, sex
related offences against girls that are on an increase.
In 2021, 22,000 teenage pregnancies were registered in Uganda every
month, while 40 sex related offences against girls were reported to
police every day.
Out of the 130 youth that graduated from Queen Mother Vocation centre,
60 are living with disabilities.
Best Kemigisa, the Toro Kingdom Queen Mother who also doubles as the
Institutions director, says women and girls are culturally a weak
gender that has resulted into cases of early marriages stopping them
from getting education.
