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	Girls have ''mountain to climb'' to achieve same opportunities as boys by Unicef, Save the Children, Girls not Brides   11 October 2016   Girls have ''mountain to climb'' to achieve same opportunities as boys, report Helle Thorning-Schmidt, CEO of Save the Children International and Kevin Watkins, CEO of Save the Children UK.   In the time it takes you to read this article, at least 45 girls under 15 will marry. That’s one girl every 7 seconds.   Today is the International Day of the Girl Child, and while there is much to celebrate, there is still a mountain to climb until we reach a world in which girls will have the same opportunities as boys.   Today we think about girls like Zahra, a pregnant 14-year-old girl set alight by her husband in Afghanistan after reportedly being stabbed and tortured by his family. She later died in hospital. Zahra was married off at the age of 11. She lost her childhood – and life – as a result.   Zahra’s experience was extreme in its brutality and inhumanity, but it reflects a world in which poverty and discrimination combine to deny millions of children the right to survive, learn and be safe – simply because they are girls. A world in which every year 15 million children become brides; in which twice as many girls as boys never start an education, and many more fail to complete it; and in which childbirth is the second cause of death for adolescent girls.   Without action to tackle the barriers that prevent girls from surviving, learning and fulfilling their potential, we will jeopardise the global goals adopted only last year by the world’s governments.   The reverse is also true. Investing in girls is the smart thing to do, as well as the right thing, and will not only transform the lives of millions of children, but also ensure a better future for their children, breaking the passage of poverty from one generation to the next.   Tackling child marriage is one of the surest ways of us realizing this girls’ development dividend. The numbers can appear overwhelming: one quarter of all married women were child brides, and in countries including Bangladesh, Mali and Niger, two thirds of girls are married before their eighteenth birthday. And current progress towards the UN target of ending child marriage by 2030 is painfully slow. At just one percent a year, the rate of reduction is one eighth of what’s needed.   But the case for action is compelling. Girls who marry early see their education cut short, at precisely the point where the social and economic payback from education is highest. While the gap in primary school enrolment for boys and girls has closed dramatically, girls are far more likely than boys to drop out of secondary school.   Child brides also become child mothers. 90 percent of teenage pregnancies around the world are to married girls. These girls are giving birth before their bodies are ready, endangering themselves and their children: babies born to adolescent mothers are 50 percent less likely to survive than children whose mothers are over 18.   And girls who marry are exposed to heightened risks of violence and abuse. Half of all child brides have husbands at least ten years older than them, often making it doubly difficult to have an equal voice.   Today Save the Children launches a new report “Every Last Girl” as part of our global campaign to secure the rights of the world’s most excluded children. As our report shows, child marriage is a complex problem that has to be addressed at different levels.   Laws and international standards can send a powerful signal that girls have a right to a childhood. Through the new Sustainable Development Goals, every single country has re-affirmed its commitment to eliminate harmful practices against children, including child marriage.   The UN General Assembly, Human Rights Council and the African Union have all committed to eradicate the practice. And a raft of countries with high rates of child marriage, including Gambia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, have all recently ratified legislation banning the practice.   But this is not an issue that can simply be legislated out of existence. Often, girls are becoming brides because of family poverty and insecurity. Giving the poorest families cash transfers so that they can afford to keep their daughters in school, and delay marriage, shows promising results in many countries. Making schools safe for girls and sensitive to their needs, especially once they reach puberty, can often be the difference between attendance and dropping out.   And ensuring that girls have the knowledge and healthcare they need to delay and plan pregnancy is crucial not only to their health, but also to their lifelong economic opportunities.   We have to recognize too that child marriage is often a deep-seated social convention, and organisations like ours must get better at supporting the growing movement of people, from religious leaders to women’s organisations, who recognize that child marriage is a threat to girls’ futures, and are working to challenge and change attitudes and practices.   We are building our work in this area. From Somalia, where we are working with mosques, to Bangladesh, where we are supporting girls’ groups in Sylhet, we are seeing the powerful impact that can be achieved for girls where we collaborate with communities.   What strikes us most when we see this work is the extraordinary courage, energy and commitment of so many girls to tackle these issues themselves. This is what inspires hope. Supporting this future generation of leaders, and ensuring that their voices are heard – in communities, in national capitals, and on the world stage – will be critical to the goal of ending child marriage, and transforming the lives of millions of children.   The bitter truth is that no one solution will end child marriage; there is no quick fix. It is the sum of all our work across all levels that will see the practice become obsolete. The International Day of the Girl is a reminder of why we cannot relent in this mission. http://bit.ly/2do0Gx7   * Access the Every Last Girl report: http://bit.ly/2dH7jeS http://plan-international.org/ http://bit.ly/2dO7K5L http://bit.ly/2dQT35f http://bit.ly/2ebVb2c http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/girl-child http://www.unfpa.org/gender-equality http://bit.ly/2em1FjU http://bit.ly/2f7Vbnv   Oct 2016   Girls spend 160 million more hours than boys doing household chores everyday   Girls between 5 and 14 years old spend 40 per cent more time, or 160 million more hours a day, on unpaid household chores and collecting water and firewood compared to boys their age, according to a report by UNICEF.   Harnessing the Power of Data for Girls: Taking stock and looking ahead to 2030 includes the first global estimates on the time girls spend doing household chores such as cooking, cleaning, caring for family members and collecting water and firewood.   The data show that the disproportionate burden of domestic work begins early, with girls between 5 and 9 years old spending 30 per cent more time, or 40 million more hours a day, on household chores than boys their age. The disparities grow as girls get older, with 10 to 14 year olds spending 50 per cent more time, or 120 million more hours each day.   “The overburden of unpaid household work begins in early childhood and intensifies as girls reach adolescence,” said UNICEF’s Principal Gender Advisor Anju Malhotra.   “As a result, girls sacrifice important opportunities to learn, grow, and just enjoy their childhood. This unequal distribution of labour among children also perpetuates gender stereotypes and the double-burden on women and girls across generations.”   The report notes that girls’ work is less visible and often undervalued. Too often adult responsibilities such as caring for family members, including other children, are imposed on girls. Time spent on chores limits a girl’s time to play, socialize with friends, study and be a child. In some countries, collecting firewood and water puts girls at risk of sexual violence.   The report also found that: Girls between 10 and 14 years old in South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa spend nearly double the amount of time on household chores compared to boys.   The countries where girls between 10 and 14 years old bear the most disproportionate burden of household chores compared to boys are: Burkina Faso, Yemen and Somalia. 10 to 14 year-old girls in Somalia spend the most amount of time on household chores in total: 26 hours every week.   “Quantifying the challenges girls face is the first critical step towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goal on gender equality and breaking down barriers that confront the world’s 1.1 billion girls,” said UNICEF Chief of Data and Analytics Attila Hancioglu.   Harnessing the Power of Data for Girls: Taking stock and looking ahead to 2030 notes that data for two thirds of the 44 girl-related indicators in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – are either limited or poor.   Harnessing the Power of Data for Girls: Taking stock and looking ahead to 2030 notes that in addition to household chores, the report presents data on girl-related issues addressed by the SDGs including violence, child marriage, female genital mutilation and education. Achieving the SDGs that address these issues and empowering girls with the knowledge, skills and resources they need to reach their full potential, is not only good for girls, but can drive economic growth, promote peace and reduce poverty.   http://uni.cf/2dIO0lj   Sep 2016   Collecting water is often a colossal waste of time for women and girls, writes Sanjay Wijesekera.   UNICEF says the 200 million hours women and girls spend every day collecting water is a colossal waste of their valuable time.   As World Water Week gets underway in Stockholm and experts gather to try to improve the world’s access to water, the UN children’s agency stressed that the opportunity cost of lack of access to water disproportionately falls on women.   “Just imagine: 200 million hours is 8.3 million days, or over 22,800 years,” said UNICEF’s global head of water, sanitation and hygiene Sanjay Wijesekera. “It would be as if a woman started with her empty bucket in the Stone Age and didn’t arrive home with water until 2016. Think how much the world has advanced in that time. Think how much women could have achieved in that time.”   “When water is not on premises and needs to be collected, it’s our women and girls who are mostly paying with their time and lost opportunities,” he added.   The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal for water and sanitation, Goal 6, calls for universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water by 2030. The first step is providing everyone with a basic service within a 30-minute round trip, and the long term goal is to ensure everyone has safe water available at home. However, UN estimates are that in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, for 29 per cent of the population (37 per cent in rural areas and 14 per cent in urban areas), improved drinking water sources are 30 minutes or more away.   In sub-Saharan Africa, one roundtrip to collect water is 33 minutes on average in rural areas and 25 minutes in urban areas. In Asia, the numbers are 21 minutes and 19 minutes respectively. However for particular countries the figures may be higher. A single trip takes longer than an hour in Mauritania, Somalia, Tunisia and Yemen.   When water is not piped to the home the burden of fetching it falls disproportionately on women and children, especially girls. A study of 24 sub-Saharan countries revealed that when the collection time is more than 30 minutes, an estimated 3.36 million children and 13.54 million adult females were responsible for water collection. In Malawi, the UN estimates that women who collected water spent 54 minutes on average, while men spent only 6 minutes. In Guinea and the United Republic of Tanzania average collection times for women were 20 minutes, double that of men.   For women, the opportunity costs of collecting water are high, with far reaching effects. It considerably shortens the time they have available to spend with their families, on child care, other household tasks, or even in leisure activities. For both boys and girls, water collection can take time away from their education and sometimes even prevent their attending school altogether.   Collection of water can affect the health of the whole family, and particularly of children. When water is not available at home, even if it is collected from a safe source, the fact that it has to be transported and stored increases the risk that it is faecally contaminated by the time it is drunk.   This in turn increases the risk of diarrhoeal disease, which is the fourth leading cause of death among children under 5, and a leading cause of chronic malnutrition, or stunting, which affects 159 million children worldwide. More than 300,000 children under 5 die annually from diarrhoeal diseases due to poor sanitation, poor hygiene, or unsafe drinking water – over 800 per day.   “No matter where you look, access to clean drinking water makes a difference in the lives of people,” said Wijesekera. “The needs are clear; the goals are clear. Women and children should not have to spend so much of their time for this basic human right.” Visit the related web page
	Women and girls with disabilities need empowerment, not pity, UN experts tell States by Maria Soledad Cisternas Reyes Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities   States too often fail to uphold their obligations with regard to women and girls with disabilities, treating them or allowing them to be treated as helpless objects of pity, subjected to hostility and exclusion, instead of empowering them to enjoy their fundamental human rights and freedoms, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has said.   “Policies for women have traditionally made disability invisible, and disabilities policies have overlooked gender. But if you are a woman or a girl with disabilities, you face discrimination and barriers because you are female, because you are disabled, and because you are female and disabled,” said Committee member Theresia Degener.   To help to address this, the Committee has issued guidance for the 166 States that have ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on how they can promote the empowerment of women with disabilities to enable them to participate in all spheres of life on an equal basis with others, as set out in the Convention and expressly in Article 6.   The guidance, termed a General Comment, stresses that refraining from discriminatory actions is not enough. States need to empower women by “ raising their self-confidence, guaranteeing their participation, and increasing their power and authority to take decisions in all areas affecting their lives.”   The guidelines note that there are three main areas of concern regarding women and girls with disabilities:   Physical, sexual, or psychological violence, which may be institutional or interpersonal; Restriction of sexual and reproductive rights, including the right to accessible information and communication, the right to motherhood and child-rearing responsibilities; Multiple discrimination.   Women and girls with disabilities need to be recognised as individuals who enjoy the same rights as others to make decisions about their lives, the Committee notes. “Women with disabilities are often treated as if they have no control or should have no control over their sexual and reproductive rights,” the General Comment says.   For example, women and girls with disabilities are particularly at risk of forced sterilisation, while mothers with disabilities are more likely to have their children taken away.   The General Comment details the measures States parties should take in a range of areas, including health, education, access to justice, and equality before the law, transport and employment, to enable women and girls with disabilities to fully enjoy their human rights.   “Our recommendations cover practical steps, such as planning public services that work for women with disabilities, and involving them in the design of products so they can use them. Think of the women and girls with disabilities who face huge and daily hurdles with regard to water, sanitation and hygiene, and how guaranteeing accessible facilities, services and products could transform their lives,” CRPD member Diane Kingston said.   “Our General Comment also covers attitudes. For example, girls and young women with disabilities face not only prejudices encountered by persons with disabilities in general but are often constrained by traditional gender roles and barriers that can lead to situations where they receive less care and food than boys, or where their chances to get an education or training are much reduced and hence their future prospects of employment,” Committee member Ana Pelaez highlighted.   The General Comment calls on States parties to repeal or reform all legislation which discriminates, either directly or indirectly, against women and girls with disabilities, and also urges public campaigns to overcome and transform long-held discriminatory attitudes towards women with disabilities.   “We hope that States parties will be guided by this General Comment to review their laws and practices to achieve greater recognition and fulfilment of the human rights of women and girls with disabilities,” said Committee Chair Maria Soledad Cisternas Reyes. http://bit.ly/2byWj1u http://bit.ly/2cjjvPW http://bit.ly/2eeEhSu http://bit.ly/29QzRyn http://bit.ly/2emw8PJ http://reliefweb.int/report/world/let-me-decide-and-thrive-global-discrimination-and-exclusion-girls-and-young-women Visit the related web page
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