A few days ago, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) launched its 2017 National Human Development Report for Dominican Republic devoted to the topic of teenage pregnancy in the country. These findings are complemented by another report presented by UNICEF and the World Bank in August and also by the report presented in November by the National Statistics Office (ONE) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the Inter Press Service reports.
The three documents present a compelling and disturbing description of the reality of the problems of teenage pregnancies in the Dominican Republic. Two out of 10 women between the ages of 15 and 19 in the Dominican Republic have been pregnant or have been mothers; representing 15.9% of the country’s population.
The causes of this ominous reality are described as being multiple; but its consequences are clear: low or very low quality of life, poor welfare, recurrent poverty and exclusion.
The link between poverty and child and teenage pregnancy is clear, and the UNDP National Human Development Report shows that the link is to be found in the opportunity cost that teenage pregnancy represents for the human development of these young women. That is, the opportunities that they lose as a consequence of those early pregnancies or maternities.
This situation is aggravated when considered that it has an equally quantifiable impact on the young pregnant woman, on the family environment of the pregnant girl or teenager and of course also on the child, the product of that pregnancy.
The report suggests that the trend could be reversed if a new architecture of policies that affect and integrate prevention is urgently introduced, as well as the mitigation of the effects of pregnancy through care and protection policies.
IPS report highlights that if the Dominican Republic does not resolve the problem of teenage pregnancy (despite its high sustained economic growth) the promising emerging social transformation and modernization will be dashed and the country may not reach the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
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IPS News
21 December 2017
