EDUCATING GIRLS TO LEAD THE TRANSFORMATION

Through supportive and safe education, empowered girls are the empowered women of the future.

Alongside the health crisis is an unprecedented global education crisis—a crisis that has become even more urgent under COVID-19. Pre-pandemic figures show that, in sub-Saharan Africa, only 40 percent of girls completed lower secondary school, and even those who attended school were not learning. Now, experts fear that girls will not return to school after lockdowns are over.

Keeping girls in school is crucial—not only is it a right in and of itself, it’s also a means of protecting girls against HIV and becoming child brides and teenage mothers, while also increasing their prospects for securing jobs and higher incomes as adult women. And investing in secondary education for girls is transformational: Child marriage, child mortality, maternal mortality, and child stunting all decline, while national growth rates increase.

Education for children and adolescents, especially girls, must be complemented by a safe and supportive environment, an approach advocated by the new United Nations initiative “Education +.” Central to this initiative is tackling harmful social norms, policies, and laws steeped in gender discrimination and gender injustice that not only make adolescent girls and young women vulnerable to HIV but also negatively impact families, communities, and countries.