Last spring, with the Ebola outbreak under control, students in Sierra Leone returned to school after a months-long hiatus. But absent from the classrooms were several thousand adolescent girls. A law that went into effect in April bars "visibly pregnant" students from school.
The consequences of this new law have been heartbreaking, says Esther Major, who researches economic, social and cultural rights at Amnesty International. "A 12-year-old girl I interviewed was five months pregnant. She was raped — and my heart broke," Major recalls. "And she told me of her hopes and dreams to help people in the future but now she feels she won't be able to do that."
Major co-authored a report Amnesty published Friday titled "Shamed and Blamed: Pregnant girls' rights at risk in Sierra Leone." We asked her to tell us more about the law and its effects.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
[For more of this story, written by Diane Cole, go to http://www.npr.org/sections/go...-losing-an-education]
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