3 months ago
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Today, the country of Belize took a major step towards reducing adolescent pregnancies in indigenous communities across the country by launching the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Project. The initiative, which is being guided by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Global Affairs Canada, seeks to build an enabling environment that can address the root causes for adolescent pregnancies across Indigenous and Tribal Communities. Dr. Batula Abdi from the UNFPA told us more.
Dr. Batula Abdi, Technical Advisor, UNFPA: “Our main mission, I will say, is and mandate is ensuring that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, and every young person is able to fulfill their potential. So we work with government, civil society organization, academic institution to promote this mission and vision to ensure that there is universal access to sexual reproductive health in each country that we work in. The main focus of this program is to ensure that young people are able to access sexual reproductive health information and services in a culturally appropriate manner within their communities in health services and also uh various entry points that we utilize to make sure that young people have access to information and services. Also, apart from the service aspect and strengthening the health system to provide a non-judgmental service to young people, we will be working closely with communities to ensure that the negative social norms are addressed in very culturally appropriate manner, in a way that the community owns the whole process to address this issue of adolescent pregnancy which is not just a health problem, but it is a development problem as we discussed in the session.”
The project which will span five years, promises to strengthen sexual and reproductive health and rights across three communities: the Stann Creek, Toledo and Cayo District. Through the collaboration with GOB and UNFPA, health care providers in these communities will be provided with sensitization training and adequate resources including contraceptives.
Shehryar Sarwar, Head of Development Coop., Global Affairs Canada: “For this project, we based it on Canada’s commitments to global health and commitments to bilateral development in Belize. It is a combination of consultations between Canada, the Ministry of Health or the Government of Belize, and the United Nations Fund for Population ( UNFPA). We decided uh with our partners to target the communities of Stann Creek, Toledo, and here in Cayo where we are, uh because these were considered to be the most vulnerable situations, Maya communities, Indigenous communities, tribal communities, where we found through data that the incidence of teenage and adolescent pregnancy is amongst the highest in the country. Young women and girls are in positions of great vulnerability and a risk of marginalization, stigmatization once they get pregnant and the consequent effects or impacts this has on their ability to lead normal potential, normal lives and to achieve their economic and social potentials.”
The project will cost around $8 million Canadian dollars, or BZ$11.4 million courtesy of Global Affairs Canada.
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