2. Child: The Convention on the Rights of the
Child (CRC) defines a child as a person
under the age of 18. A girl child is thus a
female younger than 18 years of age.
Discrimination: Treatment or
consideration based on class or category
rather than individual merit; partiality or
prejudice.
3. Female Genital Cutting (FGC): The
practice that involves the removal or
the alteration of the female genitalia. It
is a centuries-old practice found in
many countries among people from
various religions and beliefs, most
prevalent in Africa.
4. Honor Killing: The practice of killing girls
and women who are perceived to have
dishonored a family’s reputation by
allegedly engaging in sexual activity or other
improprieties before or outside of marriage.
‘Improper’ behavior justifies grounds for
killing. It has expanded to include
transgressions, which are not initiated by
the girl, including rape and incest.
5. “The girl child is discriminated against boys from the
earliest stages of life through her childhood and into
adulthood. In some areas of the world, men
outnumber women by 5 in every 100. The reasons for
this discrepancy include harmful attitudes and
practices, such as female genital mutilation, son
preference …….. early marriage … violence against
women, sexual exploitation, sexual abuse,
discrimination against girls in food allocation and
other practices related to health and well-being.”
6. By age 18, girls have received an average of 4.4 years less
education than boys.
Of the more than 110 million children not in school,
approximately 60 per cent are girls.
Of the more than 130 million primary - school-age children
world-wide who are not enrolled in school, nearly 60 per
cent are girls.
In some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls
have HIV rates upto five times as high as adolescent boys.
Pregnancies and childbirth related health problems take
the lives of nearly 1,46,000 teenage girls each year.
7. In Sub-Saharan Africa, a woman faces a 1 in 13 chance
of dying in childbirth. In Western Europe the risk is 1
in 3200.
At least one in three girls and women world-wide has
been beaten or sexually abused in her lifetime.
An estimated 450 million adult women in developing
countries are stunted, a direct result of malnutrition in
early life.
Every year, two million girls and women are subjected
to female genital mutilation.
8. Lakshmi was 20 years old and already had
one daughter. Upon the arrival of a second
girl she no option but to kill this second
daughter. Lakshmi refused to nurse the
newborn and to silence the infant’s cries of
hunger she fed her a poisonous combination
of sap and castor oil. The baby died soon
after.
9. Hannah was genitally cut when she was eight years
old. She knew little about the procedure, but
understood it to be a ritual, a ceremony, a process
that would allow her to become a woman. Six
women held Hannah down to perform the
procedure. There was no anesthesia or pain
medication at any point during the procedure, and
Hannah almost lost consciousness because of the
immense pain. The practitioner was then paid the
equivalent of one dollar for the procedure.
10. Raina Arafat was twenty-one years old and did not
want to marry the man her family had chosen for
her. She Was secretly seeing her Iraqi boyfriend
whom she wanted to elope with. Her aunts told
her they had arranged a secret meeting between
the two and brought her to an open patch of land
in the suburb of Amman. Her aunts walked away
and let her brother, Rami, shoot her in the back of
her head. Raina’s ‘crime’ was being in love with a
man that was not sanctioned by her family and
cultural ideals.
11. In order to help girl children survive and reach their
full potential, the Beijing Platform for Action
recommended that governments, agencies and private
sector to:
Eliminate all forms of discrimination against the girl child;
Eliminate negative cultural attitudes and practices
against girls;
Promote and protect the right of girl - child and
increase awareness of her needs and potential;
12. Eliminate discrimination against girls in health
and nutrition;
Eliminate the economic exploitation of girl labour
and protect girls at work;
Eradicate violence against girl-child;
Promote the girl-child’s awareness of and
participation in social, economic and political life.
Strengthen the role of the family in improving the
status of the girl-child.
13. If women are allowed
to be enlightened the
world will appear in
all its glory.
Woman is the
mother of race and
is the liaison
between the
generations. Our
culture attaches
much importance
to women,
therefore, India has
been symbolized as
‘MOTHER INDIA’
