By Ivana Kottasova, Washington DC
The World Bank has postponed its
decision on granting Tanzania a $500 million loan, following pressure from
activists who oppose the country's policy of banning pregnant girls and young mothers from attending
state school.
The
bank's executive board was meant to meet on Tuesday to consider the loan, but
the meeting was postponed after one member requested a delay on Monday, a
source at the bank told CNN.
Sources
did not say why the meeting was postponed. However, the request to delay came
in after the bank held a last-minute emergency meeting with Tanzanian activists
and international human rights organizations earlier on Monday.
Last
week, Tanzanian civil society groups sent a letter, seen by CNN, to the
executive board urging them to stop the loan until the country passes a law
that guarantees the rights of pregnant girls to attend regular secondary
schools and ends mandatory pregnancy tests.
CNN
visited three Tanzanian schools in 2018 where girls from grades eight and up
were given compulsory pregnancy tests.
Bella
Bird, the World Bank's Country Director for Tanzania, Burundi, Malawi and
Somalia, attended the meeting on Monday, briefing the activists on why her team
thought the loan should go ahead. Bird is expected to step down on Friday,
according to a source at the bank.
Tanzania
has run into trouble with the bank over its policies targeting pregnant girls
before. A $300 million educational loan to Tanzania was withdrawn in 2018 over concerns about expelling pregnant
girls and the introduction of a law that made it a crime to question official
statistics.
The
Tanzanian government amended the statistics law last year, but stopped short of
any formal changes to the way it treats pregnant girls.
A World
Bank spokesman for Tanzania said that since 2018 the bank has worked with the
Tanzanian government to find a solution. He said the purpose of the reworked
loan program was to "enhance the quality and provision of education."
"The
program has been redesigned ... to ensure girls and boys who drop out,
including pregnant girls, have alternate education options for
themselves."
Asked why
the bank didn't require a guarantee that girls who get pregnant would be
allowed to continue in state school if they wish to, the spokesman repeated the
current solution was a result of an agreement between the World Bank and President
Magufuli.
The
Tanzanian government declined to comment to CNN.
According
to a World Bank document outlining the loan, about 5,500 girls were not able to
continue their secondary education due to adolescent pregnancy and young
motherhood in 2017.
Around a
quarter of Tanzanian girls aged between 15 and 19 are mothers or pregnant.
According to the United Nations Population Fund, the percentage of teenage
girls who have given birth or who were pregnant increased to 27% in 2016 from
23% in 2010.
Child
marriage, as young as 15, which has been barred since 2016, remains an issue --
36% of women aged 25-49 have been married before they turned 18, according to
official data from 2016, the latest available. - CNN
If you deny a mother education, you are creating a foolish and poor family to the extended chain of clan that makes a poor tribe and definitely creating a poor country!
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