Attachments: UN SR Education Report to CHR 2006.pdf
WUNRN
From the Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the
Right to Education
to the UN Commission for Human Rights
2006
D. Marriage, Pregnancy and
Motherhood
71. Patriarchal practices that limit female autonomy and keep
young and teenage girls away from education usually involve early or unwanted
marriages, pregnancies and motherhood.
72. Teenage marriages are often based on a type of
socialization that reinforces the idea held by parents that the ultimate
objective for girls is matrimony. This idea is not only propagated in the school
environment but also exacerbated by the psychological disempowerment that girls
suffer in their primary relations, feeding the belief that education is not an
option for married women.
73. The type of socialization that excludes married teenagers
from educational opportunities is accompanied in many countries by laws
authorizing early marriage, thereby validating a structure of subjection that
hampers the right to education with the paradoxical association of standards
that guarantee free will.
74. In at least 44 States, girls may contract marriage before
boys, and in 25 of those countries (in all regions except Central Asia) the
minimum marriageable age for girls is 15 years or less.
75. Recent studies show that in some countries more than 50
per cent of women marry before they are 18 and are obliged to drop out of
school.
76. Pregnancy and motherhood in teenage girls are also common
motives for discrimination in education; worse, when pregnancy is a disciplinary
offence teenagers risk expulsion from school and are forced to consider abortion
if they wish to continue their studies.
77. For example, the Joint United Nations Programme on
HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) reports cases in Africa in which one in five pregnancies
occurs among teenagers aged 13-19, and some trends in North American and Europe
show pregnancy rates in the region of 80 per thousand girls aged
15-19.
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