International Day of the Girl 2023: "Invest In Girls' Rights: Our Leadership and Well-being."

The statistics on the violation of girls' rights across the globe is alarming.

While one may argue that the attention on the girl child is becoming discriminatory against the boy child, the data available show that the girl child is still more deprived and more at risk than her male counterparts.

The focus for this year's International Day of the Girl is "Invest In Girls' Rights: Our Leadership and Well-being."

It is important to invest in girls' rights. This way, they can develop the skills to keep them confident and safe.

According to the data from United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF),

📍Nearly 1 in 5 girls are still not completing lower-secondary and nearly 4 in 10 girls are not completing upper-secondary school today. And in certain regions, the numbers are even more dismal. Around 90 per cent of adolescent girls and young women do not use the internet in low-income countries, while their male peers are twice as likely to be online.

📍Globally, girls aged 5-14 spend 160 million more hours every day on unpaid care and domestic work than boys of the same age. This unequal distribution in unpaid work intensifies in adolescence with serious implications for girls’ well-being.

📍Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, 100 million girls were at risk of child marriage in the next decade. And now over the next ten years, up to 10 million more girls worldwide will be at risk of marrying as children because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

📍Nearly 1 in 4 married/partnered adolescent girls aged 15-19 have experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner at least once in their lifetime.

These and many others call for the following actions according to UNICEF:

1. Centre girls in the protection and promotion of rights.

2. Recognize, celebrate and support girls' leadership.

3. Introduce and scale up multi-sectoral programmes that support adolescent girls' well-being.

4. Ensure information, services and systems meaningfully change to be adolescent-girl-friendly.

5. Make structural changes to scale up funding for girls (and not as a one-off).

To learn more, visit: https://www.unicef.org/gender-equality/international-day-girl-2023

Bliss Ojeruse,

Saving Hand Development Initiative (SHADE-IN).

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