Since 2012, the 11th of October has been marked as the International Day of the Girl. The day aims to highlight the needs and problems of girls, and to call for efforts to meet their needs and fulfil their rights, in partnership with them.
This year’s theme - GirlForce: Unscripted and unstoppable – celebrates the changes that are occurring in girls’ lives worldwide. Today, as we near the end of the second decade of the 21st century, more girls are joining and completing their schooling, fewer are getting married, and fewer are becoming mothers whilst they are still children. Increasingly, girls are informing and organizing themselves to find and implement solutions to the problems they face. For example, as part of GirlsNotBrides, they are key players in the global movement to end child marriage; as part of International Youth Alliance for Family Planning, they call on their communities to provide them with comprehensive sexuality education and access to contraceptive information and services; and in towns and cities everywhere, girls are leading protests to end sexual abuse and violence.
In many areas, girls are making full use of their opportunities to study and to enter the world of work. They are fighting discrimination, overcoming barriers imposed on them for generations, and striving for a more just and peaceful world. Whilst these girls have been empowered to advocate for and drive change, they do so often on behalf of the very many who have not had the same chances in life and the same opportunities. The International Day of the Girl this year, celebrates these transformational changes that are both unscripted and unstoppable as well as being essential to ensuring their health.
While we celebrate these achievements, it is important to recognize that even where progress has occurred – such as declines in the levels of child marriage - it remains uneven and slow. There are still many areas in which there is limited progress (e.g. in the levels of HIV infection) or no progress (e.g. in levels of suicide and depression, and in sexual abuse and violence). Clearly, there is still much more that needs to be done – for and with girls.
To respond to these enormous challenges in context of the survive, thrive and transform agenda of the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health, WHO calls for a package of actions – building knowledge and skills, building individual and social assets, providing a safe and supportive environment, and providing health and counselling services. WHO also calls for educational and employment opportunities to broaden adolescents’ horizons and help them make a place for themselves in the world. Finally, WHO calls for action to address poverty, insecurity, disempowering social norms and restrictive laws that marginalize girls and increase their vulnerability to health and social problems.