Despite global commitments made by governments – including the Beijing Platform for Action and Agenda 2030’s Sustainable Development Goals – girls continue to be denied their rights and prevented from realising their potential by harmful gender norms, violence, policy neglect and entrenched discrimination.
The policy brief, ‘Achieving the Rights of Girls and Gender Equality’, shows the discrimination and inequality faced by girls all over the world and how governments can and must deliver on their commitments to support gender equality.
Girls’ rights are human rights.
How to ensure that every girl is able to realise her rights
In the year of the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, adopted by the Fourth World Conference on Women, the Joining Forces alliance is calling on governments and cooperating partners, international and regional actors, in alliance with civil society to:
- Invest to ensure that girls can realise their rights and are empowered as they grow.
- Intensify their efforts to meet their obligations to girls under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and complementary legal and policy frameworks.
- Meet their commitment under the Sustainable Development Goals to “adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls”.
- Enable girls’ systematic and meaningful participation in accountability mechanisms under international, regional and national frameworks, so their voices can be heard and heeded.
- Intensify their focus on supporting countries at all income levels to ensure the rights of girls and build more gender-equal societies.
- Apply a gender perspective to public policy across all sectors and providethe resources necessary to make gender equality and girls’ rights a reality.
- End all forms of gender-based and sexual violence and discriminationagainst girls – including child marriage, other forced unions, and the practice of FGM/C – by investing in known solutions that address the root causes of these human rights violations, working together with local leaders, girls and women activists, and by engaging boys and men in sustained action for change.
- Identify, challenge and change patriarchal laws and harmful social norms.
Gender equality is possible and known solutions to discrimination are shown in Child Rights Now! Achieving the Rights of Girls and Gender Equality.