Vice President Moves to Fight Teenage Pregnancy

Vice President Moves to Fight Teenage Pregnancy.

The vice president Rtd Major Jessica Alupo is set to roll out a nationwide campaign against teenage pregnancy and early marriages which are on a rampage across the country due to continued lockdown on schools.

Alupo was opening the three-day Regional Convention of Regional Women’s Political Leadership, where women activists called for more policies on affirmative actions to uplift more women in positions of leadership .

The vice president Jessica Alupo says she is working together with First Lady Janet Museveni, UNICEF, and UNFPA to roll out a national wide program against teenage pregnancies and early marriages which has been escalated by Covid-19 induced lockdown. She appealed to civil society organizations to support the program rescue the girl child.

Alupo was officiating at the Regional Women’s Political Leadership Convention in Kampala which was organized by Akina Mama Wa Africa to discuss strategies of uplifting women into positions of leadership and called upon fellow women in cabinet positions to provide remarkable leadership to inspire the girl children into politics.

With a cabinet of 43% women and 46% women in Local councils, Women activists have applauded Uganda for moving steadily in achieving gender equality objectives and celebrated the appointment of the second female Vice President and the first female prime minister in the history of the land.

However, Akina Mama Wa Africa has called for more policies on affirmative action to increase the number of women in parliament. The proposed amendment in the constitution to abolish constituency representation in parliament and replace it with a model where each district is represented with two MPs of different sex in order to put more women in decision-making positions.

Women activists expressed great concerns that politics is getting too much commercialized, which is depriving women of participation in politics. They emphasized that a lot of women who aspire to join politics, lack financial resources to run against men on direct seats which is frustrating gender equity representation.

The 2021 general elections saw the number of Female MPs on direct seats drop from 21 to 13.