Santo Domingo, (EFE).- 65% of Dominican adolescents between 15 and 17 years old have suffered sexual violence at some point in their lives, according to data offered this Tuesday by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
In a statement on the occasion of the International Day of the Girl, Unicef also cited data from the Enhogar-MICS 2019 survey, which indicates that 20% of young Dominican women have their first child before the age of 18.
The numbers increase to 34% among the most vulnerable and 49% among those who only finish primary school. One of the most worrying findings, the note added, is that 2% of young women had a child before the age of 15, and situations of abuse, incest and sexual violence can often be hidden under this figure.
Regarding the statistics of early unions of children under 18 years of age, in Dominican territory there has been some progress, reducing from 37% in 2014 to 32% in 2019.
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Among the population with fewer economic resources, this figure fell from 60% (2014) to 49% (2019). In this period, the numbers of early unions in children under 15 years of age also fell from 12% to 9%.
Despite this progress, the country presents much higher figures than the Latin American average, where 22% of those under 18 years of age are in a union or married.
The resident representative of Unicef in the Dominican Republic, Rosa Elcarte, congratulated the Caribbean nation for some advances in the rights of girls, among which she cited the law that prohibits child marriage, or the public policy for prevention and care of early unions and teenage pregnancy.
However, he pointed out that “there is a long way to go to end the inequality of rights between boys and girls.”
