A group of girls attend a Shonglap session in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. The peer leader (left) is discussing adolescent legal rights. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Naimul Haq
BHOLA, Bangladesh, Jul 9 2016 (IPS)

Four years ago, Farzana Aktar Ruma, now 18, was almost married off without her consent.

Her parents had settled on someone they considered a reasonably wealthy young man with a good family background, and did not want to miss the opportunity to wed their eldest daughter.

Farzana’s father, Mohammad Yusuf Ali, told IPS, “I thought it was a blessing when the proposal came to me from a family friend who said that the talented groom-to-be has his own business and ready home in the heart of a busy district town in Barisal, not far from where we live.”

No one defies Yusuf, an influential man in Char Nurul Amin village in Bhola, an island district in coastal Bangladesh, where most people depend on agriculture and fishing to make a living.

So, without consulting his daughter, Yusuf promised her as a bride and asked the family to prepare for the wedding."The power of knowledge is the key to success." -- Priyanka Rani Das, who quit school in 2012 due to extreme poverty but has since re-enrolled.

Farzana was only 14 years old and did not want to get married, but she didn’t know where to turn. Then Selina Aktar, who lives nearby, offered to help.

Aktar told IPS, “It was not surprising, but I was [still] shocked at how parents readily accept such marriage proposals without considering the age of their daughters.”

On the eve of the wedding, Aktar arranged a meeting with Farzana’s parents and asked them to call it off and let her stay in high school until she graduated.

Aktar is the facilitator of a seven-member Community Legal Services (CLS) organisation that advises students, parents and others on legal rights, including rights of adolescents.

“After several hours of discussions, we were able to convince Farzana’s parents that an educated girl was more precious than a girl thought to be a burden for her family at her early age,” Aktar said.

Abul Kaiser, a legal aid adviser with COAST, a leading NGO operating in the coastal regions of Bangladesh for more than three decades now, and whose work focuses mostly on social inequalities, told IPS, “The society is cursed with myths and most parents still biased on such medieval beliefs favour early marriage. A girl soon after her puberty is considered a burden to the family and parents look for opportunities to get rid her as soon as possible for so-called ‘protection’ of their daughters.”

To challenge the traditional beliefs that still haunt many communities in this modern age, COAST promotes informal learning through various programmes which they believe make a positive impact.

Executive Director Rezaul Karim Chowdhury told IPS, “The society needs to be empowered with information on the rights of such adolescent girls, and that is what we are facilitating. Most parents who may not have had opportunities of going to schools are expected to behave this way but our approach is to change this mindset so that a sense of acceptance exists.”

At Radio Meghna in south Bhola, Bangladesh, teenaged girls broadcast a programme aimed at preventing early marriage and staying in school. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

Radio Meghna, a community radio with limited broadcast frequency operating since February 2015 in south Bhola’s Char Fassion, has been at the forefront of such advocacy programmes.

The station broadcasts targeted programmes focused on dispelling myths through informal learning programmes.

Fatema Aktar Champa, a producer at the radio station, told IPS, “We have a large audience and so we take the opportunity to educate adolescents and also their parents on merits and demerits of early marriage. On various occasions we invite experts almost every day to talk about reproductive health, adolescents’ legal rights, need for education and the values, social injustices and many more allied issues linked to challenges of adolescents.”

Unlike other community radio stations, Radio Meghna is completely run by a team of about 20 adolescent girls.

Khadiza Banu, one of the producers, told IPS, “There is a general feeling that the radio team at Meghna has a wide range of acceptance in the society. On many occasions we broadcast programmes just to build trust on parents’ decisions to prevent early marriage and allow continuing education.”

Education is key to development, and girl’s education is especially important since it is undermined by patriarchal cultural norms.

In Cox’s Bazar district, COAST has taken a different approach to empowering adolescent girls to demand their rights and offering livelihood opportunities.

Despite traditional beliefs that devalue girls’ education, especially in poor, rural areas, adolescent girls in many regions of Bangladesh are getting help from a programme called Shonglap – dialogue that calls for capacity building and developing occupational skills for marginalised groups in society.

Priyanka Rani Das, who quit school in 2012 due to extreme poverty, has joined Shonglap in South Delpara of Khurushkul in coastal Cox’s Bazar district.

Part of a group of 35 adolescent girls, Das, who lost her father in 2009, has been playing a leading role among the girls who meet six days a week in the Shonglap session held at a rented thatched home in a suburb of Delpara.

Shy and soft-spoken, Das told IPS, “I had to drop out of school because I was required to work as a domestic worker and support my family of six.”

A neighbour, Jahanara Begum, who had been attending informal classes at a Shonglap session nearby, convinced Das that completing her education would help her earn a much better living in the long run.

Das told IPS, “I realized that girls are behind and neglected in the man-dominated society because of our lack of knowledge. So I left the job and joined Shonglap where they have demonstrated that the power of knowledge is the key to success.”

Das is one of about 3,000 teenagers in Cox’s Bazaar who returned to school after taking basic refresher classes and life skills training like sewing, repairing electronic goods, rearing domestic animals, running small tea shops, pottery, wood works and other activities that generate income.

Jahangir Alam, programme manager of the Shonglap Programme of COAST that runs the programme in Cox’s Bazar told IPS, “Those who graduate are also supported with interest-free loans to start a business – and so far over 1,600 such girls are regular earning members supporting their families.”

Ruksana Aktar, peer leader of the group in Delpara, said, “Shonglap is basically a platform for less privileged adolescent girls to unite and gather strength through common dialogues. Such chemistry for 12 months gives them the moral strength to regain lost hopes.”

Mosammet Deena Islam, 17, comes from a family of cobblers and had never been to school. Islam always dreamt of pursuing an education but poverty prevented her from going to school, even though schooling is free in Bangladesh.

She joined Shonglap in Delpara and after a few months in the group, she enrolled in a state-run school where she now attends grade 9 classes.

Rashed K Chowdhury, executive director of Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE), Bangladesh’s leading think-tank advocating for children’s education told IPS, “Educational exclusion for girls is a major problem, especially in socio-cultural context in Bangladesh. Girls are still married early despite stringent laws against such punishable acts.

“Adolescent girls are encouraged to stay home after puberty to ensure ‘security’ and the most common reason is girls are used as earning members to supplement family income.”

Chowdhury said, “I believe such an approach of building opportunities for youth entrepreneurship to poor girls (for income generating activities) who wish to continue education, can considerably change their lives.”

Shonglap, spread over 33 districts in Bangladesh through a network of over 4,600 such groups, aims to give voices to these neglected girls and enable them to negotiate their own rights for life.

The Shonglap programme is being implemented by COAST and other NGOs with funding from Stromme Foundation of Norway.

As AIDS becomes the leading cause of death of adolescents in Africa, empowering youth – especially girls - to make safe life choices and avoid HIV is crucial. Credit: Mercedes Sayagues

By Sam Olukoya
LAGOS, Nigeria, Nov 21 2014 (IPS)

Two years ago, Shola* was kicked out of the family house in Abeokuta, in southwestern Nigeria, after testing HIV-positive at age 13. He was living with his father, his stepmother and their seven children.

“The stepmother insisted that Shola must go because he is likely to infect her children,” Tayo Akinpelu, programme director of Youth’s Future Savers Initiative, told IPS.

“Shola felt as an outcast,” says Akinpelu. Eventually, Shola’s grandparents took him in.

HIV among teenagers is devastating families in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, where AIDS has become the leading cause of death among adolescents.

“This is absolutely unacceptable,” says Craig McClure, chief of HIV programmes with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in New York. “What’s more, AIDS-related deaths are decreasing for all age groups except adolescents.”

The global AIDS death toll fell by 30 percent between 2005 and 2012 but increased by 50 percent among adolescents, says a UNICEF report.

Fear of seeking help

One reason for this shocking teen death toll, says Dr. Arjan de Wagt, chief of HIV/AIDS with UNICEF in Abuja, is the low number of adolescents on antiretroviral treatment (ART).

Of the 3.1 million Nigerians living with HIV, half are under 24 years. But only two out of ten HIV positive youth over 15 and just one out of ten under 15 received the lifesaving drugs in 2013, de Wagt told IPS.

Rejection by family and society, as happened to Shola, or fear of rejection, prevents adolescents from seeking help.

“Many HIV positive adolescents are dying in silence because they are too ashamed to access treatment,”’ Blessing Uju, a Lagos-based youth counsellor, told IPS.

“The shame is even bigger for the girls. In Nigeria, if you are HIV positive, the impression is that you are a commercial sex worker,” she says.

Sally* did not tell her parents or siblings when she tested HIV positive four years ago, at age 19.

“At the family level, there is a lot of stigma,” she told IPS.

Although aware of the danger of not taking her medication regularly, Sally often skipped it to avoid being seen with pills at home.

“As a young person, you need a confidant. If you are not strong, you might end up taking your life,” she says.

Teenagers need family help to stay on ART, says Akinpelu.

Shola’s grandparents would normally cook the first meal for the day in the afternoon until Akinpelu explained to them that the pills can cause nausea on an empty stomach and Shola needed a hearty meal earlier.

Uju says that treatment fatigue hits adolescents hard. “Some say they prefer to die than to continue taking their drugs,” she says.

High death toll

Of the 2.1 million adolescents living with HIV worldwide in 2012, more than 80 per cent are in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Malawi, with 93,000 HIV positive teenagers, has 6,900 annual AIDS-related adolescent deaths.

The death toll is linked to late diagnosis and starting ART too late, explains Judith Sherman, of UNICEF in Lilongwe.

Malawi’s policy is that all children seen in health facilities should be offered an HIV test. “Unfortunately, this does not happen routinely,” she says.

Teenagers’ adherence to ART is lower than adults, says Sherman, “for a range of reasons like treatment fatigue, depression, fear of stigma, denial and unstable family relationships.”

Tanzania’s estimated 165,000 adolescents living with HIV face similar challenges as their peers in Nigeria and Malawi. (see sidebar)

Allison Jenkins, chief of HIV/AIDS with UNICEF in Tanzania, says that one effective way to help teenagers are clubs.

“Teen clubs improve adherence to treatment, especially among members who attend regularly,” she told IPS.

HIV among teen girls

Alarmingly, adolescent HIV prevalence is highly gendered, with teen girls showing infection rates that UNAIDS calls ”unacceptably high”.

Teen girls aged 15-19 in Mozambique have a prevalence of seven per cent, more than double the boys of the same age. Botswana presents a similar scenario.

Lucy Attah, of the Lagos-based Women and Children Living with HIV & AIDS, blames poverty.

“Girls have to trade sex for money to sustain themselves,” she says. “The pressure for money is higher in the cities where teenage girls compete to get the best mobile phones and clothes.”

Adolescents become sexually active, try drugs and alcohol, feel invulnerable, and experience the social and economic pressures of becoming an adult. HIV and the lack of youth-friendly health services compound the problem, says the UNICEF report.

 “We must do more and do it well, focusing on sub-Saharan Africa and on adolescent girls, where the heaviest burden lies,” says McClure.

*names changed to protect privacy

Edited by Mercedes Sayagues