Adolescent pregnancy in Latin America and the Caribbean: Seeking reproductive justice for Afrodescendent women and girls

BOCAS DEL TORO PROVINCE, Panama – “We don't have special care for women,” said Jakelyn Chiu, a single mother of three from the Bocas del Toro Province in Panama. “Here in the district, we don't have a permanent gynaecologist. Women have to go to another province for care.” 

Ms. Chiu had her first baby at age 17 and now works with UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, to empower adolescent girls and prevent unintended pregnancies in her community.

Across Latin America and the Caribbean, a girl becomes a mother every 20 seconds, according to a recent report by UNFPA.  At 1.6 million births per year, the region has the second-highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the world, and Afrodescendent girls are 50 per cent more likely to become pregnant in their teens than their non-Afrodescendent peers.

And barriers to accessing healthcare along with a lack of essential information mean Afrodescendent women are up to three times more likely to die during childbirth than white women. But what’s driving this crisis, and what will the impacts be on the futures of millions of girls? 

Steep healthcare inequalities 

A lack of infrastructure in the Bocas del Toro Province forces many women to travel long distances to receive basic care, Ms. Chiu explained. She recalled a time when, bleeding while pregnant, she had to travel over four hours by public transport to receive medical care.

Across the region, 20 women die every day from causes related to pregnancy or childbirth. For Indigenous and Afrodescendent women, the risk is up to three times higher. 

Too often, sexual and reproductive health services and centres for reporting gender-based violence are not only physically inaccessible, they are also out of reach due to discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, race, income and age – which particularly affects Afrodescendent adolescents.

Education is key

Through its Leaving No One Behind project, supported by Ireland and Luxembourg, UNFPA works with communities along Central America’s Caribbean coast to deliver information, ensure access to family planning services, and provide advice to young people.

The lack of comprehensive sexuality education and access to contraceptives is a major challenge for young people. “There are many cases of unwanted teenage pregnancies, and this is something that should be addressed,” said Rashell Briggitte, a young woman from the city of Almirante, whose friend became pregnant at just 16 years old. 

She said the province has a high rate of sexually transmitted infections, while in schools sex education is limited to basic biology classes. “There should be a subject in schools to further explore this topic.”

Adolescent pregnancy not only harms the futures and opportunities of girls, it also presents a substantial loss of revenue for countries themselves, due to the lower income of young mothers. 

Securing reproductive justice calls for equal opportunities for Afrodescendent people, including through quality education. Women who had their first child in adolescence are less likely to pursue studies than those who became mothers at 20 or older, the research showed. An adult first-time mother is three times more likely to complete university, and when entering the workforce has an income up to three times higher, than women who had their first child in adolescence.

“We are all obligated to fight racism. We must fight it with arguments, head-on, not cower in the face of racism” 

Securing reproductive justice 

Higher rates of maternal death and adolescent pregnancy among women and girls of African descent confirm that historical patterns of race-based reproductive discrimination continue – and often go unquestioned. 

“We are all obligated to fight racism. We must fight it with arguments, head-on, not cower in the face of racism,” said Shirley Campbell, an Afrodescendent writer and activist from Costa Rica. “Sometimes we get scared because we're afraid the system will corner us, as it has cornered us for centuries.”

She spoke at a UNFPA event in Costa Rica for young people from Afrodescendent, Creole, Garifuna and Miskito communities in Central America and the Caribbean. The initiative addressed racism and discrimination as drivers of teenage pregnancy and sought to improve access to the information, services, and opportunities that girls from these communities need to make informed decisions about their bodies and their lives. 

“If we fall prey to discrimination, it affects us in so many ways: work, sexual and reproductive rights, security, and many other areas,” said Lenad Gamboa from Guatemala, who attended a training session as part of the UNFPA project.

Empowering communities as agents of change

One of the most important measures to securing reproductive justice is hearing from Afrodescendent communities themselves. That means listening to their words, of course, but it also means acknowledging the value of their cultures and reflecting their communities in data. 

UNFPA advocates for investment in midwifery programmes and health systems, culturally sensitive training for healthcare providers, and improvements in data collection to ensure people of African descent can not only exercise their rights, but drive profound transformations in their communities.

“We have worked with the traditional midwives for them to integrate ancestral knowledge with modern health practices,” said Patricia DaSilva, a senior programme adviser with UNFPA.

“This includes supporting accurate birth registration. It sounds like a really simple thing, but when you are in a remote community without access to technology, without access to administrative offices, it becomes this really, really important issue.”

Only three countries in Latin America and the Caribbean – Brazil, Colombia and Suriname – collect and report maternal health data disaggregated by ethnicity or race. With UNFPA support, 18 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, where more than 20 per cent of the population is of African descent, now include ethnic and racial identifiers in national censuses.