Given Rewire's focus on motherhood as we approach Mother's Day, it is critical that we get some insight into the nature and challenges facing women and mothers in various countries around the world. A recent story out of Uganda offers some insight into these issues.

The Daily Monitor reports that the African Rural Development Initiative (ARDI), a Ugandan NGO, has enrolled 161 child mothers below 16 years of age into school to pursue various courses in practical skills. This program continues and extends the work of an extensive project launched by the organization as a means to "rekindle the lost hope of child mothers living in untold sufferance in rural areas of the Manafwa district."

Joseph Weyusya, ARDI director, says that 31 child mothers have been enrolled in tailoring while 130 have been enrolled into primary and secondary schools. The organization has given out 200 goats to child mothers for income generation and for provision of milk to their children. Many of the young women they assist are from the Bugisu region of Uganda, where, according to a recent study, the highest rate of sexual activity and pregnancy occurs in the poorest region.

According to the study, girls between the ages of 10-16 years old are often single child mothers—forced to carry pregnancies to term and then are banished by their parents, rejected by their spouses and often find themselves living with grandparents. These young women and girls are often having unprotected sex, putting them at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS.

This case highlights a few very important facts about global reproductive rights. The first is the significance of sex education for young women so that they make informed decisions about when, if and how they become pregnant. Note though, that the article rather tellingly leaves out any mention of the fact that there were clearly men involved here (not to mention the likelihood that many of these are cases of rape). Sex education might be one aspect of a solution, but if these girls are pregnant at 10 then there needs to be accompanying questions about who is responsible for these acts of sexual assault against children. Perhaps we should also require some investigation into why these girls are the only ones who seem to be bearing the social ramifications of becoming pregnant.

Also, we can see that certain social provisions like basic schooling and access to economic resources can go a long way in providing agency and autonomy. While offering education and a goat, seems like very little in the way of "rehabilitation" (though I think it's more the system, and not the women, that needs rehabilitating), it illustrates that motherhood often means increased vulnerability and it jeopardizes access to essential social services for these young women and girls. Many of these questions and concerns are certainly not unique to Uganda. Here in the United States, it is also often the lack of accurate and empowering education and the perceived impunity in cases of sexual assault that create the same dynamics amongst young women/girls and the protection of their reproductive rights.