Suchergebnisse

Despite decades of investment and dramatic progress against HIV, adolescent girls remain at disproportionate risk of infection. Population Council research shows that the best way to protect girls and young women from HIV and other bad outcomes is to reach them early—before they experience irreversible events like HIV infection or unintended childbearing—and with enough health, social, and cognitive assets to make a measurable difference in their lives. This book is a comprehensive review of three programs launched by the Population Council and the Ethiopian government. Two of the programs work to reduce Ethiopian girls' HIV risk by providing out-of-school adolescent girls in urban slums and married adolescent girls in rural areas with adult female mentors, education on HIV and AIDS and related issues, non-formal education, and links to health services. The third program focuses on husbands, promoting care-giving to wives and children and addressing extramarital partnerships, alcohol abuse, and violence. The Council's experiences in Ethiopia show that when HIV prevention programs are shaped by evidence and designed for replication and scale-up, they can reach large numbers of the people at greatest risk and increase their ability to avoid infection.

This study aims to investigate the experiences of migrant female domestic workers (FDWs) in relation to social exclusion, policy exclusion, and human rights violations in the studied area. The pragmatic paradigm, with an embedded design, was employed as the dominant approach. Convenience sampling was used to gather a sample of domestic workers who are not officially recorded. A total of 130 participants took part in the quantitative study, and 28 participated in the qualitative study. Quantitative data were analyzed using the SPSS software, while qualitative data were analyzed thematically. The results indicate that migrant FDWs are marginalized and excluded from the country's labor laws, and the Council of Ministers has delayed issuing laws to protect them. As a result, most respondents do not have legally binding work contracts and instead have contractual arrangements that are drafted by brokers and favor employers. This leads to various human rights abuses, including the denial of the right to education and access to health care. In addition, employers were found to be reluctant to send their employees to school, and some even fired employees due to their illnesses. These experiences have led to mental health issues such as low self-esteem, feelings of despair and insecurity, and resentment toward employers and society at large. Therefore, it is recommended that the government and stakeholders take steps to advocate for the rights of FDWs and initiate programs to raise social awareness and inclusion in labor laws.

AbstractNearly 33 million female youths have an unmet need for voluntary family planning (FP), meaning they are sexually active and do not want to become pregnant. In Ethiopia, age at marriage remains low: 40% and 14% of young women aged 20–24 were married by the ages of 18 and 15, respectively. Despite increases in FP use by married 15- to 24-year-olds from 5% in 2000 to 37% in 2016, unmet need remains high at 19%. Supply-and-demand factors have been shown to limit FP use, yet little is known about how stigma influences FP use among youth. This study validates an anticipated stigma (expectation of discrimination from others) index and explores its effect on unmet need. A cross-sectional survey was implemented with 15- to 24-year-old female youth in Ethiopia in 2016. The analytic sample included married respondents with a demand (met and unmet need) for FP (n=371). A five-item anticipated stigma index (Cronbach'sα=0.66) was developed using principal component factor analysis. These items related to fear, worry and embarrassment when accessing FP. The findings showed that 30% agreed with at least one anticipated stigma question; 44% had an unmet need; 58% were married before age 18; and 100% could name an FP method and knew where to obtain FP. In multivariate regression models, youth who experienced anticipated stigma were significantly more likely to have an unmet need, and those who lived close to a youth-friendly service (YFS) site were significantly less likely to have an unmet need. Interventions should address anticipated stigma while focusing on social norms that restrict married youth from accessing FP; unmet need may be mitigated in the presence of a YFS; and the anticipated stigma index appears valid and reliable but should be tested in other countries and among different adolescent groups.

To meet the unique sexual and reproductive health needs of its large adolescent and youth population, Ethiopia's government has expanded and institutionalized youth-friendly services (YFS) at all levels of the health system. To help inform and improve these efforts, the Evidence Project, in collaboration with USAID/Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health, conducted a study on adolescents' and young people's use of and opinions on YFS. Results showed that young people were satisfied overall with the health services they received, regardless of whether it was basic health services or YFS. Awareness and use of YFS was low, but many of the young people who reported using contraception may have been using YFS without knowing it. Importantly, respondents reported low levels of social autonomy and required permission to leave the house from either a parent or spouse, which could present a significant barrier to accessing health services, and especially SRH services. Policymakers and programmers can apply these findings to increase awareness and demand for sexual and reproductive health services among young people, and to ensure that services are targeting and reaching adolescents and young people effectively.

The sexual and reproductive health of adolescents has become a major public concern, particularly with the advent of HIV/AIDS. Many organizations have tried to find strategies to reach youth with reproductive health (RH) information and services through various service delivery models. One such model has been the multipurpose youth center approach. Multipurpose youth centers typically include recreational or vocational services as entry points for RH and family planning (FP) information and services. There is some evidence in a variety of African settings (notably Kenya and Zimbabwe) suggesting that these centers are underutilized and not cost-effective. As a result, the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG) reviewed its youth center program to gauge effectiveness in reaching young people in Ghana with RH/FP information and services. The findings from this research are useful to PPAG's youth program and are also relevant for other African FP associations and agencies using this model. As noted in this report, the lessons learned from this research will be useful to policymakers and government officials whose work entails ensuring the welfare of youth.

Using data from nearly 600 adolescents aged 12–19 in combination with data collected from 33 primary schools that the adolescents attended, this report explores whether certain aspects of the school environment affect the initiation of premarital sex among girls and boys in three districts of Kenya. The results suggest that, although neither the school nor the home appears to influence whether boys engage in sex prior to marriage, for girls, a school characterized by a gender‐neutral atmosphere appears to reduce the risk of their engaging in premarital sex. Furthermore, although policymakers in Kenya are clearly concerned with the problem of "schoolgirl pregnancy," the data indicate that in this sample, pregnancy is not the primary reason that girls leave school.