The day aims to highlight and address the needs and challenges girls face, while promoting girls’ empowerment and the fulfilment of their human rights.
The United Nations led initiative, International Day of the Girl Child supports more than 1.1 billion girls worldwide.
The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action is the most comprehensive policy agenda for the empowerment of women. It was the result of the Fourth World Conference on Women – held in Beijing, China, over 25 years ago. Almost 30,000 women and men from across 200 countries came together to recognise the rights of women and girls as human rights.
In the years following, women pressed this agenda forward, leading global movements on issues ranging from sexual and reproductive health rights to equal pay. More girls today are attending and completing school, fewer are getting married or becoming mothers while still children, and more are gaining the skills they need to excel in the future world of work.
Since then campaigns have been organised by and for adolescent girls and have tackled issues such as child marriage, education inequality, gender-based violence, climate change, self-esteem and girls’ rights to enter places of worship or public spaces during menstruation.
This year’s initiative is called ‘My Voice, Our Equal Future‘, which encourages people to be inspired by what adolescent girls see as the change they want, the solutions – big and small – they are leading and demanding across the globe.
