According to the United Nations, 2023, nearly 1 in 5 girls are still not completing lower-secondary and nearly 4 in 10 girls are not completing upper-secondary school today.
Around 90 per cent of adolescent girls and young women do not use the internet in low-income countries, while their male peers are twice as likely to be online.
Globally, girls aged 5-14 spend 160 million more hours every day on unpaid care and domestic work than boys of the same age.
Adolescent girls continue to account for 3 in 4 new HIV infections among adolescents.
Nearly 1 in 4 married/partnered adolescent girls aged 15-19 have experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner at least once in their lifetime.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, 100 million girls were at risk of child marriage in the next decade. And now over the next ten years, up to 10 million more girls worldwide will be at risk of marrying as children because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today’s more than 1.1 billion girls are poised to take on the future. Every day, girls are breaking boundaries and barriers, tackling issues like child marriage, education inequality, violence, climate justice, and inequitable access to healthcare. Girls are proving they are unstoppable.
Movements and actions like improved maternal health care and parental support for adolescent mothers, to digital and life skills programmes, from comprehensive sexuality education to survivor support services and violence prevention programmes, there is an urgent need for increased attention and resourcing for the key areas that enable girls realize their rights and achieve full potential.
Many girls are championing solutions and change in their communities. We envision a world where girls have space to shape government policy and spending to inform the rules and norms by which businesses should operate, and to direct the priorities for new research and innovations.
The norm is “Who runs the world- Girls!”