6. Encourages Governments to acknowledge and implement the recommendations regarding women’s rights contained in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights; 7. Also encourages Governments to review, legislate if they have not already done so, enforce and provide public information concerning the minimum age of consent and minimum age at marriage, paying attention to the importance of empowering women so that they may choose education or employment as alternatives to early marriage; 8. Urges Governments, where required, to adopt, implement and enforce laws to eliminate infanticide; female foeticide; preferential treatment of boys to the detriment of girls’ education, health, self-esteem and quality of life; forced marriages; child labour; child trafficking resulting in child slavery and prostitution; and other forms of child abuse; 9. Also urges Governments to prohibit female genital mutilation and other traditional practices which diminish the dignity and integrity of women and, in collaboration with local and regional non-governmental organizations and local communities, to act vigorously to create awareness among concerned populations of the urgent need to eliminate those practices and provide the support services necessary to mitigate their harmful effects; 10. Further urges Governments to empower women and close the gender gap as soon as possible by: (a) Encouraging women’s participation and representation at all levels of the political process in each community and society; (b) Promoting the fulfilment of women’s potential through education and development of skills, paying urgent attention to the elimination of illiteracy among adult women and to the importance of education of the girl child; (c) Eliminating legal, political, social and cultural barriers against women, and assisting women to establish and realize their rights, particularly those that relate to sexual and reproductive health; (d) Adopting concrete measures to improve women’s ability to earn income, achieve economic self-reliance, inherit, own and dispose of property and land, and have access to credit on the basis of equality with men without discrimination; 11. Further urges Governments to ensure the widest and earliest possible access by girls and women to secondary and higher education and vocational training, including taking positive actions to increase the school retention rates of girls, with the aim of reducing the current disparities between boys and girls by the year 2000; 12. Urges all countries in a position to do so and appropriate international organizations to provide assistance to developing countries for family-planning services, including contraceptives, information and education; 13. Encourages Governments and local and international non-governmental organizations to launch information and education campaigns to change the public perception of the value of the girl child, generate social awareness of the short- and long-term poverty and socio-economic consequences of discrimination -20-