“The aim of UNFPA’s State of the World Population Report is to provoke a new way of thinking about and tackling adolescent pregnancy and to encourage a shift away from interventions targeted at girls towards broad-based approaches that build girls’ human capital, protect girls’ rights and empower them to make decisions,” said UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin.

Early marriages and pregnancy is a huge global problem, especially in developing countries, where every year 7.3 million girls under 18 give birth, according to the new report. Of these 7.3 million births, 2 million are to girls 14 or younger, who suffer the gravest long-term health and social consequences from pregnancy, including high rates of maternal death.

The report places particular emphasis on girls 14 and younger who are at double the risk of maternal death and other health consequences of pregnancy in young age. It offers a new perspective on adolescent pregnancy, looking not only at the girls’ behavior as a cause of early pregnancy, but also at the actions of their families, communities and governments.

While the report concludes that adolescent pregnancy is a much bigger challenge in the developing world than in developed countries, it finds that it is still also a significant issue in the latter. In the United States, for example, only about half of the girls who become pregnant as adolescents complete high school by 22, compared to 9 out of 10 girls who do not become pregnant.

Although the trend of early marriages and teenage pregnancy is on the decline in the region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the levels are still much higher than in Western Europe. The regional average adolescent pregnancy rate is 32 (for comparison: Switzerland has a rate of 2). In Central Asia, for example, more than 90% of adolescent births are within marriage. Hence, the report argues, early marriages and teenage pregnancy is a social, economic, health and human rights concern.

Despite the critical need to prevent adolescent pregnancy, “Motherhood in childhood” finds that the problem is largely overlooked by international development spending. UNFPA works to promote a holistic approach to tackling the challenge of adolescent pregnancy, which does not dwell on changing the behaviour of the girl, but rather on changing the attitudes and actions of the society she lives in. This includes:

• Keeping girls in school;

• Stopping child marriage;

• Changing attitudes about gender roles and gender equality;

• Increasing adolescents’ access to sexual and reproductive health, including contraception;

• Providing better support to adolescent mothers.

In Uzbekistan, UNFPA works in partnership with Women’s Committee, NGOs and local communities to raise awareness on the negative consequences of early marriage and educate adolescent girls and boys on reproductive health and rights issue. Thus, UNFPA-supported youth educational network, Y-PEER, reaches out to estimated number of 5,000 young people each year with information sessions on issues related to healthy lifestyle, gender equality and formation of healthy families.

UN Population Fund works in Uzbekistan since 1993. Within its third Country Programme for the period of 2010-2015, it continues to focus on:

• advancing national capacities in using population data for development programmes;

• promoting reproductive health and rights, including access of young people to information of reproductive health;

• ensuring full implementation of women and men’s rights, opportunities and responsibilities.

The Report is accessible here: www.unfpa.org/swp/