Plan International - Girls' Rights Platform - Girls' rights are human rights: Positioning girls at the heart of the international agenda

34. Stresses the need for the integration of the rights of children, girls and boys alike, in all policies and programmes and for ensuring the promotion and protection of those rights, especially in areas relating to health, education and the full development of their capacities;

44. We reaffirm our commitment to support developing country efforts to ensure that all children have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality, to eliminate gender inequality and imbalance and to renew efforts to improve girls’ education. We also commit ourselves to continuing to support the efforts of developing countries in the implementation of the Education for All initiative, including with enhanced resources of all types through the Education for All fast-track initiative in support of country-led national education plans.

49. Encourages efforts to provide safe and enabling learning environments and access to quality education for all, especially for girls and boys, in humanitarian emergencies caused by natural disasters, including in order to contribute to a smooth transition from relief to development;

23. Requests the Secretary-General to ensure that a gender perspective and the needs and rights of the girl child are integrated into the preparatory work for the special session of the General Assembly on the follow-up to the World Summit for Children in 2001, inter alia, by providing the General Assembly with a comprehensive report drawing on the experiences and outcomes of the five-year reviews of the International Conference on Population and Development, the Fourth World Conference on Women and the World Summit for Social Development, and the World Education Forum.

(b) Place special emphasis on formal and informal education, in particular for young people, including girls, and for parents and religious, traditional and community leaders, about the harmful effects of female genital mutilation, and, in particular, encourage men and boys to become more involved in information and awareness campaigns and to be agents of change within communities, with the meaningful participation of women and girls who have been subjected to the practice;

9. Also recognizes the value of teaching entrepreneurial skills at all levels of education, ensuring the full and equal participation of women and girls, and encourages entrepreneurship education through skills development, capacity- building, training programmes and business incubators;

4. Urges all Governments and the United Nations system to strengthen efforts bilaterally and with international organizations and private-sector donors in order to achieve the goals of the World Education Forum, 16 in particular that of eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and to implement the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative as a means of reaching this goal, and reaffirms the commitment contained in the United Nations Millennium Declaration 6 in this regard;

19. Invites Member States to develop national plans of action, or to strengthen existing ones, in order to achieve the objectives of Education for All so as to ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling;

37. Encourages efforts to provide safe and enabling learning environments and quality education for all, especially for girls and boys, in humanitarian emergencies caused by natural disasters, including in order to contribute to a smooth transition from relief to development;

2. Calls upon States to place a stronger focus on the development and implementation of comprehensive prevention strategies, including the intens ification of educational campaigns, awareness-raising and formal and non-formal education and training in order to promote the direct engagement of girls and boys, women and men and to ensure that all key actors, including government officials, law enforcement and judicial personnel, immigration officials, parliamentarians , health- care providers, practitioners, civil society, the private sector, community and religious leaders, teachers, employers, media professionals and those directly working with girls, as well as parents, legal guardians, families and communities, work to eliminate attitudes and harmful practices, in particular female genital mutilation, that negatively affect women and girls, and emphasizes the importance of adopting a non - stigmatization approach in all prevention interventions;

23. Welcomes the agreed conclusions of the sixty-first session of the Commission on the Status of Women, 15 in which Governments were urged to take measures to promote the economic empowerment of indigenous women, including by ensuring access to quality and inclusive education and meaningful participation in the economy by addressing the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and barriers they face, including violence, and to promote their participation in relevant decision-making processes at all levels and in all areas, while respecting and protecting their traditional and ancestral knowledge, and noting the importance of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples for indigenous women and girls;

Noting with appreciation the work carried out by all relevant organs, bodies and mechanisms of the United Nations system within their respective mandates, in particular the United Nations Children’s Fund and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, the United Nations Population Fund and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as the efforts of organizations and civil society to promote girls’ full and equal enjoyment of the right to education,

4. Requests the Working Group to give special attention, in the discharge of its mandate, to the importance of the right to education as key to the empowerment of women and girls in all spheres as well as for ensuring equality and non-discrimination;

(d) To consider strengthening and implementing broadly based prevention and treatment programmes and to ensure that such programmes adequately address the gender-specific barriers that limit access for young girls and women, taking into account all attendant circumstances, including social and clinical histories, in the context of education, the family and the community, as appropriate;

68. Recognizes the special needs of girls, strongly condemns terrorist attacks on educational facilities, especially on those for Afghan girls, and encourages the Government of Afghanistan, with the assistance of the international community, to expand those facilities, train professional staff and promote full and equal access to them by all members of Afghan society, including in remote areas;

12. Also calls upon States to develop policies and measures that promote access to education for persons with disabilities and to strengthen education systems that are fully inclusive of girls with disabilities to reduce the risk of social exclusion and poverty, which could have long-term implications for their capacity and opportunity to participate in labour markets;

41. Urges States, the international community, relevant United Nations entities, civil society and international financial institutions to continue to actively support, through the allocation of financial resources and technical assistance, efforts to address girls’ right and access to education;

(e) To support substantive gender equality and women’s and girls’ rights, including within families, through long-term awareness-raising initiatives, including for men and boys, especially education and public awareness-raising, including in the media and online, through the incorporation of curricula on all women’s and girls’ rights into teacher training courses, including on the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence, and by ensuring universal access to evidence-based comprehensive sexuality education;

8. Urges States to promote gender-sensitive, empowering educational processes, sensitive to the needs of women and girls, by reviewing and revising, as appropriate, school curricula, educational materials and teacher-training programmes and elaborating policies and programmes of zero tolerance of violence against girls or of harmful practices, including female genital mutilation, placing special emphasis on education about the harmful effects of female genital mutilation, and to further integrate a comprehensive understanding of the causes and consequences of gender- based violence and discrimination against women and girls into education and training curricula at all levels;

Affirming that the realization of the right to education, especially for girls, contributes to the promotion of human rights, gender equality and the eradication of poverty,

40. Recognizes the special needs of girls, strongly condemns terrorist attacks on education facilities, and encourages the Government of Afghanistan, with the assistance of the international community, to expand these facilities, to train professional staff and to promote full and equal access to them by all members of Afghan society, including in remote areas;

6. Also urges States to condemn all harmful practices that affect women and girls, in particular female genital mutilation, whether committed within or outside a medical institution, to take all necessary measures, including through educational campaigns and by enacting and enforcing legislation to prohibit female genital mutilation, to protect women and girls from this act of violence, to hold perpetrators to account and to put in place adequate accountability mechanisms at the national and local levels, where applicable, in order to monitor progress;

(e) Adopting all appropriate measures in the field of education to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women of all ages in order to promote the development of respectful relations and to eliminate prejudices, harmful customary practices and all other practices based on the idea of the inferiority or superiority of either of the sexes and on stereotyped roles for men and women, and raising awareness of the unacceptability of violence against women and girls at all levels, in the public and private spheres;

13. Calls upon States to scale up scientifically accurate and age-appropriate comprehensive education, relevant to cultural contexts, that provides adolescent girls and boys and young women and men, in and out of school, consistent with their evolving capacities, and with appropriate direction and guidance from parents and legal guardians, with the best interests of the child as their basic concern, with information on sexual and reproductive health and HIV prevention, gender equality and women’s empowerment, human rights, physical, psychological and pubertal development and power in relationships between women and men, to enable them to build self-esteem and foster informed decision-making, communication and risk- reduction skills and to develop respectful relationships, in full partnership with young people, parents, legal guardians, caregivers, educators and health-care providers, in order to, inter alia, enable them protect themselves from HIV infection and other risks;

20. Encourages all relevant stakeholders to further develop financial literacy and financial education programmes that include an emphasis on the impact of finance on sustainable development, as appropriate, in order to ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to access financial services, in particular women and girls, farmers and those working in micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises;

30. Stresses the need for the integration of the rights of children, girls and boys alike, in all policies and programmes and for ensuring the promotion and protection of those rights, especially in areas relating to health, education and the full development of their capacities;

5. Calls upon States and the international community to recognize the right to education on the basis of equal opportunity and non-discrimination by making primary education compulsory and available free to all children, ensuring that all children have access to education of good quality, as well as making secondary education generally available and accessible to all, in particular through the progressive introduction of free education, bearing in mind that special measures to ensure equal access, including affirmative action, contribute to achieving equal opportunity and combating exclusion, and ensuring school attendance, in particular for girls and children from low-income families;

(d) The equal right of women and girls to education without discrimination, the effective functioning of schools throughout the country and the admission of women and girls to educational programmes at all levels;

4. Also calls upon States to ensure the right to education of good quality for women and girls, on an equal basis with men and boys, and to ensure that they complete a full course of primary education, and to renew their efforts to improve and expand girls’ and women’s education at all levels, including at the secondary and higher levels, and including age-appropriate sex education, as well as vocational education and technical training, in order to, inter alia, achieve gender equality, the empowerment of women and girls and poverty eradication;

22. Urges all Governments to eliminate discrimination against women and girls in the field of education and to ensure their safe and equal access to, and encourage their participation in, all levels of education, including technical, vocational, tertiary and non-formal education and training, including in the fields of business, trade, administration, information and communications technologies, science, technology, engineering and mathematics and other new technologies, to eliminate gender inequalities at all levels and to eradicate poverty and allow women ’s full and equal contribution to, and equal opportunity to benefit from, development;