Musenyi : teenage pregnancies shatter young refugee girls’ hope for the future

SOS Médias Burundi

Musenyi, August 12, 2025 – The Musenyi site, located in Burunga province, southern Burundi, is home to more than 19,000 Congolese refugees who have fled the war in eastern DRC. This conflict pits the M23 rebels, an armed group affiliated with the politico-military movement hostile to Kinshasa, which now controls the provincial capitals of North and South Kivu as well as several strategic mining areas, against the DRC Armed Forces (FARDC), supported by local militias called Wazalendo, backed by Kinshasa and the Burundian army.

In this context, a worrying phenomenon is shaking the lives of some young refugee girls : unwanted pregnancies. Weakened by displacement, poverty, violence, and the lack of adequate educational and health facilities, many teenage girls find themselves pregnant, often abandoned and left to fend for themselves.

Bernard, father of a pregnant teenage girl :

“When we fled the war in February to seek refuge here in Musenyi, I thought we would finally find some peace. But a few weeks later, I discovered that my 16-year-old daughter was pregnant. I have no words to express what I felt : shock, shame, and immense sadness.
I feel guilty. I feel like I failed to protect her. She won’t have the chance to go back to school next year. Her future is hanging in the balance. I am deeply sorry.”

Grâce, now a young mother :

“It was last November. I was in love with a boy here at the site. He told me he was going to marry me. We had sex, then I got pregnant. When I told him I was pregnant, he ran away. He disappeared, without a trace.
Today, I live alone with my child at my parents’ house. I’ve lost all hope. My parents had promised to take me to Bujumbura to resume my studies, which I abandoned when we fled in June. But now everything is in jeopardy. It’s hard. Sometimes I wonder what I did to deserve this.”

At the Musenyi site, the dreams of some teenage girls are shattered under the weight of unplanned early pregnancies. Abandoned by those who instigated them, rejected or misunderstood by their families, they find themselves without any prospects for the future.