ACTION for GIRLS    

                                 Vol. II, Number 4, February 2007

                              Girls’ Rights are Human Rights

MAKING GIRLS VISIBLE

Girls--their rights and their concerns--will be the focus of the 2007 meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) at the UN in New York. The CSW meets annually to review the condition of women’s political, economic and social rights.  This year, the CSW will meet from February 26 to March 9 to determine what governments and citizens can do to end all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child.  Findings of UN Agencies will be reviewed, recommendations from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) will be considered and we will hear what girls themselves have to say. 

The Commission hopes to make concrete recommendations to speed up the accomplishment of the promises made to girls more than ten years ago at the Fourth World Conference on Women (1995) in Beijing, and repeated in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These include the guarantee of girls’ rights to education, health care and their full human development.

NGOs from all over the world will attend, bringing their stories of human rights abuses to the commission as well as successful practices in eliminating these abuses. They also will bring these stories to the workshops and caucus held by NGOs.

The Secretary General’s report of December, 2006 is leading the way for the upcoming CSW meeting. It analyses the current situation of the girl child. It also proposes recommendations for improving their situation.  The SG’s Report is a useful advocacy tool during the Mission visits which members of our WGG are doing before the CSW starts.

 The WGG has reviewed the document to  determine what areas need strengthening and what issues and solutions are missing in order to lobby effectively toward strengthening the outcome document.

The WGG members discussed the SG’s report. it was generally agreed that:
- The report lacks specificity
- It is too superficial
- There is no mention at all of Indigenous girls
  - There are no accountability requirements

The group felt that there was insufficient attention to programs that target girls, no mention of the role that family should play and no training of key actors.

The group felt that there should be more explicit reporting about what's happening to girls from the CSW committee.

This analysis will help WGG members to critique the outcome document that will evolve during the commission and advocate for changes based on the analysis above.

A Political Participation Workshop will be presented  by the WGG at the orientation for girl representatives on February 24^th The workshop is aimed at giving these girls more skills to take back as they work for girls’ rights and to end discrimination and violence against all girls in their own countries.

 Margery Cohen, League of Women Voters  of the US

Online Discussions of Girls Issues

An online discussion, around the theme of the CSW51 was held from 14 August to solicit opinions from girls about their major issues..

Key elements in considering the issue of discrimination and violence against the girl child in the commission are:

• Accelerating implementation of previous commitments at national level,, including through sharing experiences, lessons learned and good practices.
• Enhancing capacity to mainstream the issue of the girl-child; and
• Identifying key policy initiatives to move implementation forward.

The first three weeks of the online discussion considered issues related to girls’ protection, empowerment, and following progress through statistics and indicators. The final week was open for discussing issues previously unaddressed. The facilitator wrapped up the discussion at the end of the fourth week. A report was prepared and widely disseminated.

During the first week the greatest number of postings mentioned child marriage.  Empowerment of girls to achieve equality primarily through education was outstanding in the second week.  In the third week it was noted that it is easier to describe the problems of girls than to find the solutions.

A complete report is online at: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/elim-disc-viol-girlchild/egm_elim_disc_viol_girlchild.htm