ICRW and 80 Global Organizations Call for Stronger Efforts to Empower World’s Girls
19 December 2014
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On Thursday, December 4, 2014, the United Nations Secretary-General released The Road to Dignity by 2030: Ending Poverty, Transforming All Lives and Protecting the Planet, a report that laid out six human rights and sustainability principles designed to guide us toward achieving sustainable development.
The Secretary General’s report highlighted the importance of including youth in the post-2015 international development process, but could have gone further in affirming the unique rights and needs of more than 250 million adolescent girls living in poverty today. In response to the report, 80 organizations from 15 countries around the world – including ICRW – signed a statement affirming that, to truly achieve sustainable development, any global development framework must explicitly call out the importance of the rights of girls. The statement calls for the post-2015 agenda to include ensuring education is guaranteed beyond the primary level; developing and using robust birth registration; ensuring a full range of health services, including sexual and reproductive health and rights, as well as sexual education; ending early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation; as well as a host of other priorities that must be part and parcel of any concerted effort to end global poverty.
And the world’s girls agree. In the Girl Declaration, our Girl Insights Report, and in the Bali Global Youth Forum Declaration, girls and young people have made clear that the world they want upholds rights and equality for all people. If we are to “leave no one behind,” as the report’s title suggests is our goal, we must pay special attention to adolescent girls, as they are among the most vulnerable and hardest to reach populations, are often the last to benefit from development interventions, but are also key to accelerating progress toward a more sustainable world.