Adolescent girls are the key to eliminating poverty, achieving social justice, stabilizing the population, and preventing foreseeable humanitarian crises. This according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and five other UN organizations. To that end, the UN has launched the Adolescent Girls Task Force which has just issued a statement at this year’s Commission on the Status of Women.
“The issue facing adolescent girls is at the heart of our agenda,” said UNFPA’s executive director Thoraya Obaid, in opening remarks. “We all know that lifting them up means greater peace in families and societies and prosperity and development for all.” The statement sends a strong message that the UN and its partner organizations believe empowering adolescent girls can bring about desired individual changes and have a positive catalytic effect on society as a whole.
This idea is not new; several high profile books including Half The Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, and the growing popularity of microfinance schemes aimed at women, have highlighted this strategy in taking on large gender disparities in the developing world and elsewhere. While gender inequalities apply across all age groups, UNFPA believes adolescence, the age group of 10 to 14, is often the turning point as girls have their futures set as women.
“[D]reams dry up right before their eyes,” Ms. Obaid said of many girls’ adolescence. “They leave school too early; get married and have children while they are still children themselves.” Catapulted into adulthood, the arc of these adolescent girls’ lives often include violence, HIV infection, and the devastating childbirth injury of fistula. Moreover, “many adolescent girls join the labour force under unsafe conditions, and without valuable skills,” she added.
UNFPA says it will work with governments, civil society, communities, and adolescent girls and boys to educate adolescent girls; improve their health; keep girls free from violence; and promote them as leaders. Education is a large part of the effort. While the global ratio of girls’ to boys’ enrolment has steadily improved, girls remain two thirds of the world’s illiterate population. Programs are already underway in Malawi, Liberia, Ethiopia, and Guatemala.
More on the rights of children and primary education in India