The rights for girls need to be ensured, if society is to remain balanced.
SHARE:
Rights of girls - Global Girlhood Report 2021
- The story: A Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), Save the Children, has released the Global Girlhood Report 2021: Girls Right in Crisis. The "International Day of the Girl Child" is observed annually on 11th October. A resolution to declare 11th October as the International Day of the Girl Child was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 19th December 2011. The day is dedicated to raising awareness on gender equality while assuring rights and improving opportunities for girls.
- Report highlights:
- The 10 bottom-ranked countries – all from sub-Saharan Africa – are a reverse image of the top, performing poorly on most indicators. Children in these countries are the least likely to fully experience childhood, a time that should be dedicated to emotional, social and physical development, as well as play. In these and many other countries around the world, children are robbed of significant portions of their childhoods.
- Singapore and Slovenia top the ranking this year with scores of 990 out of 1,000. Eight Western European countries rank in the top 10, attaining very high scores for children’s health, education and protection status. Niger ranks last among the countries surveyed, scoring 392.
- The United States badly trails nearly all other advanced countries in helping children reach their full potential. The U.S. score of 948 puts it at least 25 points behind most Western European countries. Countries with similar scores include Bahrain, China, Montenegro, Qatar, Russia and Slovakia.
- Problems with girls' rights:
- Rate of Child Marriages - West and Central Africa has the highest rate of child marriage in the world.
- Deaths due to child marriages - Child marriages kill more than 60 girls a day globally, 26 girls a day in West and Central Africa and six girls a day in South Asia. South Asia is followed by East Asia and the Pacific and Latin American and the Caribbean. The deaths are majorly caused from pregnancy and childbirth resulting from child marriage.
- Effect of Covid - With school closures, health services under strain or closed, and more families being pushed into poverty, women and girls face an increased risk of violence during lengthy lockdowns. A further 10 million girls are now expected to marry by 2030, leaving more girls at risk of dying. A report by ChildLine India the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown have proved to be new drivers of child marriages in rural Madhya Pradesh. Some activists and organisations of Karnataka have raised the issue of increased child marriages in Lockdown with the Ministry of Women and Child Development.
- Suggestions: The report called on the governments to
- Help girls raise voice - Raise girls’ voices by supporting their right to safe and meaningful participation in all public decision-making.
- Focus on gender equality - Address immediate and ongoing risks of gender-based violence, including child marriage, by putting girls’ rights and gender equality at the center of Covid-19 and humanitarian responses, development policy, and broader efforts to build forward better.
- Guarantee girls their rights - Guarantee the rights of all girls, including those impacted by different forms of inequality and discrimination by developing inclusive policies and programs. Safe and ethical data collection must also be improved to better understand and respond in real-time to Covid-19’s impact on existing economic, climate, and conflict-related crises.
- Get more female staff to participate - Ensure the safe and unrestricted participation of female humanitarian staff in all humanitarian response efforts, including needs assessments and the design, implementation, and monitoring, and evaluation of all humanitarian services at every level.
- Generation equality movement: The movement is working to deliver on the Global Acceleration Plan for Gender Equality (launched by Generation Equality Forum), which set a target to prevent nine million child marriages in five years.
- Indian efforts: The Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929 restricts the practice of child marriage. The Special Marriage Act, 1954 and the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 prescribe 18 and 21 years as the minimum age of consent for marriage for women and men respectively. The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006 was enacted to address and fix the shortcomings of the Child Marriage Restraint Act. The Union Ministry for Women and Child Development has set up a committee to examine matters pertaining to age of motherhood, imperatives of lowering Maternal Mortality Ratio and the improvement of nutritional levels among women. The Committee is headed by Jaya Jaitely. The Committee was proposed in the Union Budget 2020-21. The Prevention of Child Marriage is a part of SDG 5 which deals with gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls.
- Child Marriages India specific data: The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimates suggest that each year, at least 1.5 million girls under 18 get married in India, which makes it home to the largest number of child brides in the world - accounting for a third of the global total. Nearly 16% of adolescent girls aged 15-19 are currently married. While the prevalence of girls getting married before age 18 has declined from 47% to 27% between 2005-2006 and 2015-2016.
- EXAM QUESTIONS: (1) Explain the various challenges nations face in trying to ensure rights for girls. (2) The rights for girls includes a wide variety of developmental and human rights. Explain which ones.
#GirlsRights #GenderEquality
* Content sourced from free internet sources (publications, PIB site, international sites, etc.). Take your own subscriptions. Copyrights acknowledged.
COMMENTS