After the second year of the pandemic, as in almost the entire region, updated data in Peru on this problem is few and scattered, but during 2021 at least 1,436 girls under the age of 15 were mothers.
This situation deprives these girls and adolescents of development opportunities and often perpetuates the situation of poverty in which, in most cases, they find themselves, as Hugo González, UNFPA representative in Peru, warned Efe.
“If the girl was already a person with few resources, this situation worsens when she becomes pregnant and enters a vicious circle of poverty,” González said.
A similar reality occurs in the Dominican Republic, where thousands of minors give birth every year, many of them victims of sexual abuse, which has even led organizations such as the United Nations to launch urgent care requests.
The Caribbean country ranks fifth in Latin America with the highest number of teenage pregnancies and the most recent statistics, from 2021, indicate that 77 out of every 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 19 have been mothers, that 35% of births in public hospitals correspond to adolescents and that, of this percentage, 22% do not reach 15 years of age.
Equally or more dramatic is the situation in Venezuela, where the most recent study by the National Survey of Living Conditions (Encovi) of the Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB) points out that the risk of becoming mothers increases as life progresses. adolescence.