Children need information, not condoms

IN September last year, there were reports of a lobby to introduce a legal framework to support the distribution of contraceptives to "adolescents" aged between 10 and 24 under an initiative designed to curtail teenage pregnancies in schools.

The Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey had established that teenage pregnancies increased from 21% between 2005 and 2006 to 24% between 2010 and 2011.

Health and Child Care minister David Parirenyatwa, however, shot down the idea, arguing that contraceptives should never be given to those below 18 years.

"As a ministry, we do not have a policy that advocates giving contraceptives to under-age children," he said.

But, a recent investigation carried out by The Standard, established Zimbabwean girls were now engaging in sexual encounters from the age of 12, a reality most parents were reluctant to admit because of the sensitivity around the thorny issue.

Pastor Evan Mawarire of His Generation Church said young people were living in perilous times in which they had to contend with issues of sexuality that older generations never had to grapple with during their childhood years.

Mawarire said there was need to open up platforms where frank discussions on sexuality with young people who were influenced by the music they enjoyed to engage in sex.

"Young people are very experimental. If you observe the way they talk to a girl, for example, it is based on a song, on what the musician would be saying," he said.

United Nations Population Fund programme specialist in the Strategy on Adolescents and Youth, Tamisayi Chinhengo, said comprehensive sexuality education for life planning was important.

She said young people were already acquiring information on sex from different sources so there was need to ensure that they accessed "age-appropriate, fact-based and medically accurate as well as culturally-competent" information.

She said parents should be in a position to offer their children relevant information.

She said: "Young people who are considering sex should talk to a parent or other trusted adult about their decision and about preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections."

In October last year, the South African Constitutional Court ruled that the criminalisation of sexual conduct between consenting adolescents - provided for in Sections 15 and 16 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act - was unconstitutional.

Judge Sisi Khampepe said the sections infringed on the rights of adolescents between 12 and 16 to dignity and privacy.

The judgment declared invalid provisions of the Act that criminalised consensual sexual conduct between adolescents.