Motherhood before Girlhood: A Look into Women and Girls’ Access to Education in Mozambique

“Girlhood” is the decisive period of a young woman’s life in which she learns about her beliefs, the world around her, and most importantly, herself. For many young girls, this phase is propelled by having social experiences, developing familial relationships, and obtaining a consistent education to be properly equipped for the next chapter of their lives. Whether a young girl decides to pursue motherhood or search for an occupation or both, education is a crucial factor in a girl’s development. In Mozambique, going to school is a milestone for many girls and young women due to the social barriers that prevent them from regularly attending school, if at all. Since the country holds the fifth highest rate of child marriage in the world and the highest rate of child pregnancy in East and Southern Africa, many young women are forced to sacrifice their education to raise their family. [1] In failing to provide safe, accessible education to its youth population, particularly its young women, Mozambique has violated the Convention on the Rights of the Child. While the country has attempted to alleviate these obstacles through signing treaties, declarations, and reincorporating alternative policies, these challenges have persisted and further hindered girls’ access to education.

Mozambique has taken numerous written measures in its pledge to advance access to education for its youth population through a variety of international and African treaties; however, these symbolic acts have not yielded tangible results. For instance, in 1989, the United Nations hosted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which outlined a series of rights and freedoms that all children are entitled to, including protection in times of war. Article 28 of this Convention defines the child’s right to a free, compulsory education and secures the government’s duty in taking the “appropriate measures” to ensure a child’s continued education. [2] Despite Mozambique’s ratification of the Convention in 1994, its educational retention rates do not demonstrate compliance with Article 28 as a majority of its youth population fails to remain in school. The country successfully enrolls about 94 percent of girls in primary school, but sees over a fifty percent drop in enrollment after the fifth grade. From the population that continues their education, almost two-thirds will complete primary school with “basic reading, writing, and math skills.” After this, only 11 percent of girls continue to attend secondary school and only 1 percent of girls will reach college. [3]

These drastically low enrollment rates are mainly due to the country’s extremely high rates of childhood pregnancy. While the country has set the age of marriage and consent to 18 years and adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women that requires free and full consent to marriage, child marriage persists and has led to Mozambique’s high pregnancy rates. [4] Compared to the East and Southern African average of 94 births per 1000 girls and young women ages 15 to 19, Mozambique held almost double the rate at 180 births per 1000 girls in 2023. [5] With little to no accommodations for young and expecting mothers, the girls of Mozambique must drop out of school to care for their children,

putting a halt to both their education and girlhood to pursue an early motherhood. Pregnancy and motherhood is one of the largest motivations for early dropout from school and about 66.8% of these young mothers do not return to school after delivering their children. [6] If Mozambique upheld its international commitments to equitable access to education for young girls, it would lower its rates of child marriage and adolescent pregnancy.

Beyond the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Mozambique has adopted a number of other pieces of human rights law, but has similarly failed to protect the right to education. As a member of the African Union, the country signed onto Agenda 2063 in 2015, a transformative plan that highlighted Africa’s devotion to building human capital as its “most precious resource.” [7] Later that year, the United Nations introduced their Sustainable Development Goals—two of which included gender equality and quality education. [8] All of these signatures and ratifications of general human rights law have tied Mozambique to a promise and a duty: to uphold equal access to safe education for its youth population. However, its consistent dropout rates and lack of accommodations for young and expectant mothers has challenged its claim to protecting these human rights.

Mozambique’s inability to uphold its pledges to human rights is exhibited through the gender-based discrimination that prevents young women from attempting to access the same opportunities as their male counterparts. In 2003, the government created a mandate that required schools to relocate pregnant girls and young mothers from the day schools into night schools. [9] While this was an attempt to provide alternative schooling for young girls who must care for their children during the day, it created a government-endorsed system of discrimination instead. Until 2018, when the order was revoked, these girls were refused a place in school next to their peers simply because they faced child pregnancy or adolescent motherhood. Though the reversal of the night school mandate increased Mozambican children’s accessibility to school, young girls continue to face social and systemic health barriers to their consistent education.

Mozambique is now one of fifteen African countries that has implemented a conditional re-entry policy that requires pregnant girls and young mothers to leave school once pregnant and return after giving birth. [10] Even though they are given a place in school upon their child’s birth, young mothers’ forced departure and the lack of pre-natal and after birth resources make the return to school difficult. If a majority of girls cannot return to school, Mozambique has violated Article 13 of the African Youth Charter. Ratified in 2008, this Charter states that countries must ensure girls and young women who “become pregnant or married before completing their education shall have the opportunity to continue their education.” [11] As more and more young mothers are forced out of school due to the re-entry policy, Mozambique is breaking its promise to provide accessible, long-term education.

Though the Mozambican government has claimed to have dismantled its discriminatory policies and continues to sign onto protective human rights legislation, the country’s girls and mothers face the greatest barriers to education due to social issues unacknowledged by written law. The United Nations has stated that this disenfranchisement is “compounded by vicious and incapacitating cycles of gender discrimination,” as demonstrated through the heightened rates of child marriage and adolescent pregnancy experienced in young female populations [12] These challenges disproportionately affect girls and young women and are greatly exacerbated by Mozambique’s failure to recognize and remedy gender discrimination and its impact on education access.

Many young girls lack access to resources surrounding abortion or general healthcare during pregnancy, leaving them uninformed and unprepared. Even if these young girls had the ability to remain in primary or secondary school, they would continue to lack education on their sexual and reproductive rights, as well as resources for pregnancy and abortion. Mozambican schools do not have this comprehensive education in their curriculum, which violates the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, another piece of human rights legislation that Mozambique adopted in 2003 and ratified in 2005. Article 12 of this Protocol outlines a removal of gender-based discrimination in educational spaces, while also requiring schools to host services for young women who suffer “abuses [including] sexual harassment.” Further, in Article 14, countries are required to provide affordable and accessible health services, information, and education to women in rural areas about sexually transmitted diseases and prenatal, delivery, and post-natal health. Mozambique’s failure to deliver this information to its young mothers living in both rural and urban areas has profoundly impacted its youth population’s access to education. [13]

Through this unequal system of healthcare and education, young girls fall into their fate of dropping out of school to prioritize their motherhood. Since Mozambique has not provided a strong education system that allows young mothers to both attend school and care for their families, they are forced into a bleak series of alternatives. Although the country reversed its night-school mandates in 2018, rural areas and traditional practices have kept many young mothers in this cycle because there are no other options offered to them. Some girls are rejected from day schools because some teachers are unaware that day school is a tangible opportunity for young mothers; other girls,who are unable to secure childcare during the day, are forced into nighttime education. Moreover, most young mothers have children that are still too young to attend a nursery school, and they are forced to watch their child because they have no other familial support. This creates a system of often insurmountable barriers to education.

Even if young girls can manage to secure a spot in a day school and can find a caretaker for their child, the actual distance to school raises more issues. Around 52 percent of the youth population ages 10 to 19 years old lives more than 10 kilometers away from the nearest lower secondary school—an obstacle that prevents the attendance of many Mozambican youth due to transportation costs. This issue impacts a large majority of the country’s children and highlights the continued violation of a child’s right to an accessible education. After braving the journey to a faraway school, students are faced with poor facilities, with 40 percent of Mozambican schools lacking proper toilet facilities and 30 percent lacking access to water. [14] Article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child explicitly outlines a child’s right to clean drinking water; which is violated in many of these schools. Poor facilities is one of the main contributing factors to girls’ retention rates because they require water and toilet access far more than their male counterparts due to menstruation or post-natal recovery.

Mozambique’s National Education System has opened primary education to all students, free of cost, but that does not extend to secondary or continued education to follow. These fees for tuition, transportation, and materials are a heavy burden for mothers who must finance their own lives with a child. The compilation of social, financial, and systemic barriers to education that girls face hinders their access to opportunity and a promising future. This country has not eliminated discrimination that affects the right to education as signed in the Convention Against Discrimination in Education because the numerous gender-based barriers to education continue to affect a majority of Mozambique’s youth population.

To fulfill their legal commitment to equal and safe education access in addition to accountability for young or expectant mothers, Mozambique must take tremendous steps to ensure that it is properly adhering to its ratified treaties and endorsed declarations. The country needs to provide a comprehensive series of resources for pregnancy, abortion, reproductive rights, and sexually transmitted diseases, as well as effective care or treatment for young girls in need. It must allow for greater accommodations for pregnant adolescents, young mothers who require childcare, and girls who struggle to physically attend school during the day while their own children receive care. To properly encourage continued education, the country should move towards decreasing or eliminating financial costs of secondary education in order to provide equal and valuable opportunities for its youth population. These changes will impact not only young girls and women, but also the country of Mozambique as a whole.

The lack of retention of girls in school has led to girls falling behind and missing opportunities, which in turn affects the country because their youth population is unable to reach its highest educational potential. In eliminating these disruptions to education and promising a safe, accessible future and education for girls, Mozambique will strengthen its population and its status as a country that truly provides its promised equal rights. In complying with international and regional legislation, Mozambican girls should be able to experience motherhood and girlhood, without sacrificing their education.

Edited by Andrea Ruiz

[1] Elin Martinez, Zenaida Machado, “Girls Shouldn’t Give Up On Their Studies: Pregnant Girls’ and Adolescent Mothers’ Struggles to Stay in School in Mozambique,” Human Rights Watch, February 13, 2024, https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/02/13/girls-shouldnt-give-their-studies/pregnant-girls-and -adolescent-mothers-struggles

[2] UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 28 (November 2o, 1990), https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/crc.pdf.

[3] “Mozambique Education,” U.S. Agency for International Development, https://www.usaid.gov/mozambique/education

[4] Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Article 16 (New York, December 18, 1979), https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/cedaw.pdf.

[5] Martinez, Machado, “Girls Shouldn’t Give Up On Their Studies.”
[6] Joaquim Md Nhampoca, “Early marriage and adolescent pregnancy in Mozambique,”

African Journal of Reproductive Health 26, no. 3 (2022): 114-123. [7] Agenda 2063 (2015),

https://au.int/sites/default/files/documents/36204-doc-agenda2063_popular_version_en.pdf [8] Sustainable Development Goals, 4 and 5 (January 1, 2016), https://sdgs.un.org/goals.
[9] Martinez, Machado, “Girls Shouldn’t Give Up On Their Studies.”

[10] Elin Martínez, Agnes Odhiambo, “Leave No Girl Behind in Africa: Discrimination in Education against Pregnant Girls and Adolescent Mothers,” Human Rights Watch, June 14, 2018, https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/06/14/leave-no-girl-behind-africa/discrimination-educatio n-against-pregnant-girls-and.

[11] African Youth Charter, Article 13 (Banju, July 2006), https://au.int/sites/default/files/treaties/7789-treaty-0033_-_african_youth_charter_e.pdf.

[12] “Common Country Analysis: Mozambique,” United Nations, (2021): 5.

[13] Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, Articles 12, 14 (Maputo, July 11, 2003), https://au.int/sites/default/files/treaties/37077-treaty-charter_on_rights_of_women_in_afric a.pdf.

[14] The World Bank, “Improving Learning and Empowering Girls in Mozambique,” Project Information Document, PIDA29614 (2021): 26.