{"id":35311,"date":"2017-06-23T14:25:10","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T14:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/magufuli-ban-on-pregnant-schoolgirls-angers\/"},"modified":"2017-06-23T14:25:44","modified_gmt":"2017-06-23T14:25:44","slug":"magufuli-ban-on-pregnant-schoolgirls-angers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/magufuli-ban-on-pregnant-schoolgirls-angers\/","title":{"rendered":"Magufuli ban on pregnant schoolgirls angers Tanzanians"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Many Tanzanians have condemned President John Magufuli’s comments that schoolgirls who give birth should not be allowed to return to school.}<\/p>\n

An online petition has been set up to get the president to reverse his comments.
\nMr Magufuli warned schoolgirls at a rally on Monday that: “After getting pregnant, you are done.”<\/p>\n

A law passed in 2002 allows for expulsion of pregnant schoolgirls.<\/p>\n

The law says the girls can be expelled and excluded from school for “offences against morality” and “wedlock”.<\/p>\n

Mr Magufuli, who was speaking at a public rally in Chalinze town, about 100km west of the main city Dar es Salaam, said that young mothers would be distracted if they were allowed back in school: “After calculating some few mathematics, she’d be asking the teacher in the classroom: ‘Let me go out and breastfeed my crying baby.'”<\/p>\n

He said that men who impregnate the schoolgirls should be imprisoned for 30 years and “put the energy they used to impregnate the girl into farming while in jail”.<\/p>\n

The president also criticised rights organisations who have been pushing the government to reverse the expulsion law:
\n“These NGOs should go out and open schools for parents. But they should not force the government [to take back the pupils].<\/p>\n

“I’m giving out free education for students who have really decided to go and study, and now you want me to educate the parents?”<\/p>\n

The BBC’s Sammy Awami in Tanzania reports that the crowd at the rally applauded the president’s comments.<\/p>\n

At least 8,000 Tanzanian girls drop out of school every year due to pregnancy, according to a Human Rights Watch report.<\/p>\n

{{‘Immoral’}}<\/p>\n

The online petition says that the president’s support for the expulsion law would end the education of many girls and “propagate more discrimination”.<\/p>\n

It instead calls for the girls to be protected from early pregnancies while in school.
\nTanzanians are also using the hashtag #ArudiShule (let her return) on Twitter to criticise the president’s comments and to highlight the plight of young women who get pregnant while in school.<\/p>\n

Two weeks ago, Tanzania’s Vice-President Samia Suluhu called for young mothers to be readmitted school, saying they should not be denied a right to education.<\/p>\n

Koitamet Olekina, executive director of the Maasai Education Discovery, a non-profit organisation that rescues girls from early marriages in Kenya, condemned Mr Magufuli’s comments:
\n“If Magufuli is standing on the pedestal of morality, then in my opinion, it would be more immoral to deny the Tanzanian girl child an opportunity to rise from a fall and be a better person than to relegate them to almost second-citizenship status for reasons sometimes out of their control.”<\/p>\n

\"John<\/figure>\n

Source:BBC <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Many Tanzanians have condemned President John Magufuli’s comments that schoolgirls who give birth should not be allowed to return to school.} An online petition has been set up to get the president to reverse his comments. Mr Magufuli warned schoolgirls at a rally on Monday that: “After getting pregnant, you are done.” A law passed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-35311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35311"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=35311"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=35311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}