By Diana Taremwa Karakire

Kasese District-Uganda

Teenage pregnancies have soared in Kasese district, Western Uganda, due to severe weather events and climate change. The district, once known for its copper mines, now has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in the country, with 40% of girls pregnant by the age of 18 as of 2022. Climate change has become a significant driver of this phenomenon.

On a hot and humid day in Muhokya internally displaced people’s camp, located about 10 km south of Kasese, young teenage mothers gather in a ramshackle classroom. They have been summoned by Rehema Alema Namale, the chairperson in charge of the settlement via a megaphone. One by one, they make their way out of makeshift houses made of mud and tattered tarpaulins. In the tiny room, 12- to 16-year-old mothers breastfeed their babies, while others are heavily pregnant.

Rehema Alema says that most of the teenagers here often get pregnant due to lack of sex education. There are roughly 15 teenage mothers, demonstrating how crises can escalate. After being displaced from the safety of their homes by catastrophic floods brought by River Nyamwamba in 2020, they were pushed into a settlement where they have fallen victim to child-to-child sex, rape, child marriage, and prostitution.

Sixteen-year-old Triphen Muhindo a primary five dropout is sprawled out on a mat with her one-year-old baby, Biira, sitting on her lap. Biira is crying and tugging at her mother’s blouse. She got pregnant while in the camp.

“I needed basic needs like clothes and pads. My parents couldn’t provide them. So, I decided to get a boyfriend and ended up pregnant,” said Muhindo, who was prematurely plunged into the world of adults.

For 15-year-old Mary Kabubo, life has never been the same since she discovered she was pregnant. She used to study at Bulembeya Secondary School, which was destroyed by floods. She was working at a restaurant in Kasese town where a man approached her and asked her to be his girlfriend. “I was happy. I thought my fortunes had turned. He always gave me money that I used to buy food for my four younger siblings who were always at home hungry,” said Kabubo. However, once he discovered that she was pregnant, he vanished.

Winnie Masika, now 16 is breast-feeding a seven-month-old baby, Eliza. She gave in to the advances of a man she met in the market who offered her Ugx 100,000.

The camp where these girls stay has only one health centre and a midwife who is unavailable most of the time. Pregnant mothers in most cases give birth from inside the houses, which are barely hygienic. Teenage mothers say that nurses at the facility often refuse to attend to them. “They treat us like outsiders and don’t want to attend to us. Sometimes they ask for past medical records that we lost during the floods or money that we don’t have,” said Masika.

Conditions in Muhokya camp are notoriously poor. Basic sanitation facilities, such as hand washing and toilets are lacking, which contributes to the risk of spreading diseases.

Namale the chairperson of the camp says that parents are concerned about the increase in teenage pregnancies in the camp. “Life here is hard, especially raising girls in this condition. We can’t stay home and protect them, that means we shall go hungry. She said.

Kasese district has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in the country. Among the causes cited include lack of sex education, school dropout, child marriages, peer pressure, domestic violence, and inadequate access to sexual reproductive services tailored for young people. Teenage child bearing is high in rural areas at 25% compared to 24% in urban areas. Uganda still has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in East Africa at 24%.

Faizo Muhindo, the Kasese District Probation and Social Welfare Officer says the district lacks resources to cater for all the needs of teenage girls. “Government through the office of the prime minister has been planning to buy land and relocate them, but I don’t know why this is taking long,” he said.

Climate change is a reality in Uganda. Droughts, extreme heat, flooding, landslides, and increased exposure to disease are all linked to climate change. Data from the Uganda Meteorological Department indicates that since the 1960s, average temperatures have increased by about 1.3° Celsius. This phenomenon has caused glaciers on the Rwenzori ranges to melt and recede. UNESCO says that a third of the 50 World Heritage sites that contain glaciers, including the Rwenzoris, will disappear by 2050, no matter what actions are taken to slow global warming.

As the air that hangs above the Rwenzori ranges gets warmer, melting glaciers have led to overflow and flooding of major rivers in Kasese, particularly River Nyamwamba, which emerges from the mountains on its way to Lake George in the Albertine rift. In recent times, Nyamwamba has been carrying more water downstream, wreaking havoc on communities in the lowlands. Several lives have been lost, gardens and homes destroyed. This situation is exacerbated by the degradation of fragile ecosystems through deforestation and illicit sand mining on mountain slopes and riverbanks.

The 2020 floods that uprooted Namale and her neighbors were the worst on record, according to a 2022 Kasese district disaster report. These affected 9,916 households, 49,847 people, with about 80% being children and major infrastructure, notably Kilembe Mines hospital.

For Namale, who once lived in Nyamwamba division at the base of Mt. Rwenzori, memories of what happened are still fresh. Her once towering four-bedroom house was destroyed by the floods, shattering her dreams of sheltering her nine children. She now owes a community bank around 5 million Uganda shillings, which she had borrowed to set up the house.

Namale frowns her face as she recounts events leading up to the disaster. “We woke up to people screaming loudly and running everywhere. Too much water carrying huge stones was gushing from the mountains” she recalls.

“We grabbed a few belongings and started running. It’s a miracle that we survived.” She adds.

Worries of more destruction and deaths from floods and landslides have prompted the government to formulate a relocation plan to move and resettle communities from at-risk mountainous areas of Mt. Rwenzori. However, implementation of the plan remains slow due to resource constraints.

Other interventions have included desilting and restoration of the River Nyamwamba catchment to contain flooding. Desilting is a type of dredging activity that focuses on removing sediment, silt, and debris from the bottom of water bodies like rivers to make them deeper and less prone to overflowing. Two years ago, the government secured funding from the World Bank to desilt 5.4 kilometers of the critical catchment areas of the river.

According to the United Nations Population Fund Uganda, women and girls are among the worst affected during climate-induced disasters. These often disrupt education and access to health services, increasing unplanned pregnancies.

Lack of education and health services means that girls’ understanding of their own sexual and reproductive health is also limited. In cases where people are displaced and forced into camps, sexual violence, child marriages, and other harmful practices also tend to rise.

Uganda’s Climate Change Act 2021 is gender sensitive. It advocates for gender mainstreaming in climate change adaptation and mitigation programs, but implementation remains a challenge as the gendered effects of climate disasters are often disregarded during response and recovery. “These environment disasters affect everybody, but there are subgroups that need special attention,” said Irene Twongeirwe, technical lead-climate at Women for Green Economies.

The World Bank projects that 11% of the population could move within Uganda because of slow-onset climate factors, without concrete climate and development action by 2050. “Government should integrate migration issues into policies and action plans on climate change at the national and local levels,” said Edwin Mumbere, Director at Center for Citizens Conserving Environment & Management, a local non-profit in Kasese that is supporting communities living on mountain slopes to adopt sustainable farming practices.

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