Shafaqna English- The courage, hope and determination of girls are a force to be reckoned with. It is time for the world to step up and help transform their vision and aspirations into reality,” the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres said.
“The potential of the world’s more than 1.1 billion girls is limitless,” Guterres said in his message to mark the Day. “Girls already have a vision of a world where they can thrive. What they need now is for their voices to be heard and their ambitions supported,” said Guterres. “But as we creep closer to the 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the world continues to fail girls.”
Globally, 119.3 million girls remain out of school, and 39 per cent of young women fail to complete upper-secondary education, according to UN Women. The UN’s educational and cultural agency UNESCO shared at the beginning of this month that the global cost of this learning gap could reach $10 trillion by 2030.
Meanwhile, child marriage remains a crucial issue. A girl born today will be 68 years old before child marriage is eradicated. In 2024, 4.7 million babies were born to mothers under the age of 18 and of these, some 340,000 were born to girls under the age of 15, according to the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA).
Source: News.un.org