Dr. Na­talia Kanem

Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor, UNF­PA

As we com­mem­o­rate the 10th an­niver­sary of the In­ter­na­tion­al Day of the Girl, we ask, how many ten-year-old girls are able to look for­ward to re­al­iz­ing their full po­ten­tial?

A girl’s life should be­gin the way every life should: as an open book in which she writes her own sto­ry.

If, as she moves through life chap­ter by chap­ter, she is nur­tured, en­cour­aged and sup­port­ed, she has a greater chance of rec­og­niz­ing that she de­serves op­por­tu­ni­ties and op­tions, of con­sid­er­ing her­self wor­thy and val­ued, and of par­tic­i­pat­ing in and con­tribut­ing her gifts to the world.

For it is these girls who grow up to be­come women mak­ing laws and mak­ing noise, break­ing records and break­ing bar­ri­ers, and in­spir­ing move­ments and ig­nit­ing change. From protest­ing to lead­ing coun­tries, they tell the next gen­er­a­tion of girls: Take up space. This is your world too.

Yet, from the mo­ment a girl takes her first breath, she is al­ready at a dis­ad­van­tage sim­ply be­cause she was born a girl. Glob­al­ly, al­most twice as many girls aged

15 – 19 are not in em­ploy­ment, ed­u­ca­tion or train­ing com­pared to boys

the same age.

We know that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, con­flict and cli­mate change are in­creas­ing the threats girls face. Be­fore the pan­dem­ic, 100 mil­lion girls were pro­ject­ed to be at risk of child mar­riage over the next 10 years; pan­dem­ic-re­lat­ed pover­ty and ed­u­ca­tion dis­rup­tions have added 10 mil­lion more girls to that fig­ure. For girls in hu­man­i­tar­i­an set­tings, these risks are even greater.

We must act with ur­gency and com­mit­ment to end child mar­riage. And we must tack­le its root cause: gen­der in­equal­i­ty. If all girls com­plet­ed sec­ondary school, child mar­riage would fall by 66 per cent. By in­vest­ing in qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion, en­sur­ing de­cent work for women, and dis­man­tling harm­ful gen­der norms and stereo­types, we can give girls the fu­ture they de­serve.

We are mak­ing head­way

and there are some pos­i­tive sto­ries to tell.

In 2021, the UNF­PA-UNICEF Glob­al Pro­gramme to End Child Mar­riage and its part­ners pro­vid­ed al­most 2.6 mil­lion ado­les­cent girls with life skills and com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion, which em­pow­ers them to make choic­es about their bod­ies and fu­tures. We en­gaged near­ly 16 mil­lion peo­ple in di­a­logues on child mar­riage, the rights of ado­les­cent girls and the im­por­tance of gen­der equal­i­ty. We worked to im­prove ac­cess to school and to ado­les­cent-friend­ly health ser­vices. And yet, we are nowhere near fin­ished.

There are more than 600 mil­lion ado­les­cent girls glob­al­ly. They have hopes to ful­fill and dreams to re­al­ize. Every sin­gle one of us can com­mit to be­ing their al­lies and cham­pi­ons. In­stead of sidelin­ing a girl, shine a spot­light on her.

In­stead of si­lenc­ing her, hand her a mi­cro­phone. Hear what she has to say. Give her the chance to chart her des­tiny and be a force for pos­i­tive change.

UNF­PA - Caribbean At a Glance

As the Unit­ed Na­tions sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive health agency, UNF­PA seeks to end un­met need for fam­i­ly plan­ning, end pre­ventable ma­ter­nal death, and end gen­der-based vi­o­lence (GBV) and oth­er harm­ful prac­tices by 2030. Our mis­sion is to de­liv­er a world where every preg­nan­cy is want­ed, every child­birth is safe and every young per­son’s po­ten­tial is ful­filled.

The Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States of the Caribbean served by the UNF­PA Sub-Re­gion­al Of­fice for the Caribbean (SROC) in­clude An­guil­la, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Aru­ba, Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Bermu­da, British Vir­gin Is­lands, the Cay­man Is­lands, Cu­ra­cao, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Guyana, Ja­maica, Montser­rat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lu­cia, Sint Maarten, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Suri­name, Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Turks and Caicos Is­lands.

UNF­PA has pro­vid­ed sup­port to the Caribbean since 1969 and re­mains the largest in­ter­na­tion­al source of pop­u­la­tion as­sis­tance to gov­ern­ments, non-gov­ern­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tions and civ­il so­ci­ety. Two (2) frame­works guide its ef­forts: The Pro­gramme of Ac­tion adopt­ed at the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Pop­u­la­tion and De­vel­op­ment (ICPD) held in 1994, and the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs), to which the in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment com­mu­ni­ty com­mit­ted it­self in the year 2015.

www.un.org/en/civ­il-so­ci­ety/11-oc­to­ber-in­ter­na­tion­al-day-girl-child