Harnessing young girls’ potential key for PH — UN agency

The day is to focus attention on the urgency and importance of population issues.

Already, the world population is 7.3 billion and grows by 80 million a year.

Catherine Cerulli, director of the Susan B. Anthony Center, the Laboratory of Interpersonal Violence and Victimization and associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Rochester, offers her insights on the human rights issues that young women face today and what can be done to address these challenges.

“The new development agenda calls on us to leave no one behind”. “She may suffer a debilitating condition, such as fistula, from delivering a child before her body is ready for it”.

Yet teenage girls have enormous potential. When they are valued and supported, they are healthier and more likely to emerge from poverty.

In India for rural communities, people often depend on their local environment to provide them with their food, water, medicines and wood for fuel. Their efforts, ideas and imaginations are unleashed.

The teenage years are for some girls a time of exploration, learning and increasing autonomy.

Education plays an essential role in the empowerment of young people.

“In developing countries, nearly 20 million girls between ages 15 to 19 give birth each day, and ten percent of girls who had sex before age 15 said it was coerced”.

This in turn makes for stronger societies and more vibrant economies.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) hosted a discussion forum in Bangkok on the theme of “Investing in Teenage Girls” with the motto “investing in teenage girls: empowering girls, empowering nations”.

Experts have warn that Ghana risks destroying the future of young ladies if urgent steps are not taken to curb child marriage and hazardous labour. Thousands more escape conflict every day. “Rescuing girls is the right thing to do”. In Cambodia, nearly 50 percent of young girls are laborers instead of students, according to literacy and gender-equality focused NGO Room to Read. Rather, it is the effect of an absence of choices.

Even among girls who stay in school, access to basic information about their health, civic and reproductive rights can be hard to come by, leaving them vulnerable to illnesses, injury and exploitation, he said.

A little over half of the population is under 30 years old, 52 percent to be exact. Also, the state has ranked the lowest in girls’ education in a recent survey.

“Just when girls should be in school and imagining the possibilities ahead, too many are held back from pursuing their ambitions by social and cultural traps”.