My Turn

Our future depends on a 10-yr-old girl

 

Figure out a 10-year-old girl right now. Is she in school? Is she laughing with friends? With her nose in a book or her eyes on a chess board?

Or perhaps you imagined a different scene that still plays out daily in many parts of the world: a girl who wakes up and finds out that she will be married that afternoon and taken out of school forever, a girl who will be forced to start bearing children, and will stop being a child and start being a labourer in the home.

This is the tragic reality for millions of 10-year-old girls as they approach puberty.

While in some places, age 10 can be a time of exploration, expanding horizons and new possibilities, in others it can be a time where barriers emerge, limiting options, choices and opportunities.

Many girls are transformed from children with rights and aspirations, into brides, free labour or objects of exploitation forever excluded from decisions about their lives and blocked from realising their full potential.

This is a grave and unforgivable injustice and a violation of girls’ fundamental rights.

Whenever a girl’s future is derailed in this way, her household, community and nation also suffer. With no freedom to make choices, get an education and find a good job, she will never have the power to participate in the affairs of her community and contribute to her country’s development.

But when a girl is protected, the potential gains to her—and her society—-are huge.

Each extra year a girl stays in high school, for example, delivers an 11.6 per cent increase in her average annual wage for the rest of her life.

In fact, if all the 10-year-old girls living in developing countries today were able to finish high school and make their own decisions about marriage and parenthood, they would together earn an estimated $21 billion by the time they reach 25.

A girl, who stays in school, gets a job and delays pregnancy will earn up to three times as much in her lifetime as her counterpart who drops out and becomes pregnant.

Research has shown that a girl who makes a safe and healthy transition through adolescence to adulthood has higher status in her community and invests earnings back into her household, setting in motion a virtuous cycle of social and economic empowerment that can last for generations.

The benefits of keeping a 10-year-old girl’s life on track are indisputably large.

According to The State of World Population 2016, published today by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), keeping every 10-year-old girl’s life on track is possible, but it requires support from everyone around her­­—her family, community and government.

Men and boys also have a critical role in tearing down the barriers.

So what can be done?

First, end all practices that harm girls. Enact and enforce laws that prohibit child marriage.

Second, enable girls to stay in school, at least through high school. The longer a girl stays in school, the less likely she is to become pregnant as an adolescent and the more likely to grow up healthy and join the paid labour force.

Third, provide extra support to marginalised and impoverished girls who have traditionally been left behind.

Make sure girls, before they reach puberty, have access to information about their bodies. Later in adolescence, they need information and services to protect themselves from unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.

Above all, take steps to protect girls’—and everyone’s—rights.

Today’s 60 million 10-year-old girls will be 24 when progress towards the United Nations’ new development agenda is tallied in 2030.

That agenda aims for inclusive, equitable and sustainable development that leaves no one behind. The real test of its success will be whether every 10-year-old girl today will be healthy, educated and productive in 2030. n

 

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