BUBANZA March 28th (ABP) – Unmarried mothers face a lot of problems in their daily lives, but also cause problems in the neighborhood because most of the perpetrators of their pregnancies are married men, that was revealed on March 26, 2024, in the awareness session, organized by the administrator of the Bubanza commune (north-west of Burundi), in collaboration with the Association for the Restoration of Personality (ARP Girubuntu), at the intention of single mothers, where they discussed the eradication of that phenomenon of unwanted pregnancies.
The Bubanza commune is made up of 25 villages, but on only 7 villages, at least 394 unmarried mothers have already been identified, including the one who was impregnated at 17 years old and the one who is already the mother of 3 children.
According to data from the Association for the Restoration of Personality, on only 5 hills, 30 children were not registered in the civil registry because their fathers did not recognize them, while 28 children are registered on unknown fathers, from which some of the children born in that way are victims of services such as the right to free care and other documents that other children of the same age benefit from.
Other problems caused by those unwanted pregnancies, which were mentioned in that session, include unmarried mothers being mistreated and stigmatized in their families and by the neighborhood, which leads some of them to kill or abandon their newborns, to commit suicide and others. The other consequence being cohabitation because most of the perpetrators of those pregnancies are married men, a check on the site by ABP has revealed.
The administrator of the Bubanza commune, Olive Niyonkuru and the legal representative of ARP Girubuntu, Adnette Divine Ininahazwe, call on those unmarried mothers to be involved in the eradication of that phenomenon of unwanted pregnancies and cohabitation. The other call is to indulge in self-development projects in cooperatives because, they say, the country expects a lot from them in the achievement of the vision of Burundi emerging in 2040 and a developed country in 2060.