Author: Alice Palmer, Communications and Events Intern

The girl child has a fragile place in the world. She is often the first to suffer the consequences of familial hardship, but the last person whose voice is heard. For impoverished families, choices are made about her future. The cycle of poverty pushes her into child labour, or child marriage, which subsequently leads to adolescent pregnancy. She does not go to school. Instead, she is forced to work long, gruelling days. Or, she must raise a family, all before the age of 18.

Every year, at least 12 million girls under the age of 18 get married. A staggering 650 million women alive in the world today are victims of child marriage. An adolescent girl dies every 10 minutes as a direct result of violence, which can take the form of domestic abuse, trafficking, rape, early marriage, and female genital mutilation. Globally, 130 million girls are missing out entirely on education. 

This is the lived reality of young girls all over the world. While these statistics are devastating, there is action we can take to change the course of girls’ lives and provide them with the protection they desperately need. Without it, by 2030, more than 120 million additional girls will marry before their 18th birthday.

Today, 11th October, is International Day of the Girl Child, an occasion that spotlights the many ways gender inequality impacts girls’ lives. This year marks a decade since the United Nations first recognised the day, in an effort to acknowledge the specific challenges and threats girls face in this world. It simultaneously seeks to highlight the bravery, innovation, and determination they show, even in the most difficult of circumstances. The ideas they generate, the beliefs they uphold, and the rights they passionately fight for, will no doubt change this world for the better.

However, this requires adequate support. The girl child needs proper education, access to health services, and employment opportunities – things we have witnessed come under threat or deteriorate even further in recent times. Progress on school enrollment is being undone in Afghanistan under Taliban rule: nearly half of the 3.7 million children now out of school are girls. The COVID-19 pandemic has put more girls at higher risk of early marriage, one of the consequences of school closures and reduced access to reproductive services. Climate-related disasters, like the catastrophic flooding seen in Pakistan this summer, has led to financial insecurity for millions of families; as a result, girls have been taken out of school in order to free up time for employment.

The UK has always supported the empowerment of girls globally. In 2021, the UK co-hosted a Global Partnership for Education replenishment summit to urge world leaders to invest in getting children into school, and girls’ education was a central theme of the UK’s G7 presidency in 2021. The Girls Education Challenge programme – a twelve-year scheme launched in 2012 – has supported over 330,000 vulnerable girls in Kenya to access quality education and improve their life opportunities. However, in order to fully deliver the support girls need, our overseas aid funding needs to be restored to 0.7% of the country’s GNI as soon as possible. The aid cuts not only threaten the safety and security of millions of girls across the world, but also, Britain’s own. Investment in girls’ education overseas creates our trade partners of tomorrow. Research also suggests that girls’ education strengthens climate action through improving reproductive rights, fostering climate leadership, and developing skills for green jobs. 

The theme of this year’s International Day of the Girl Child, “Our time is now–our rights, our future”, speaks to the necessary acceleration of efforts and funding to empower girls, so that a repeated cycle of inequality is broken for good. While there has been important progress in the past decade, the future is what we look towards – and there is a lot of work still to be done.