Every year United Nations celebrates 11th October as International Day of the Girl Child since 2012. The day is declared by the United Nations and is also called the Day of Girls and the International Day of the Girl.
United Nations started the initiative to celebrate this day as an opportunity to promote and supports more endeavours for girls & the protection of girl child around the world. It not only focuses on enhancing awareness of gender inequality faced by girls around the world but to establish a better environment for the dominated gender in society.
Girls face inequality around the world in terms of access to education, nutrition, legal rights, medical care and almost every aspect of life. The day marks for escalation of the ideology of women protection from discrimination, violence and forced child marriages. International Day of Girl Child reflects the successful emergence of girls and young women as a distinct cohort in development policy, programming, campaigning and research.
In a modern world like the 21st century, people still find it difficult to let women equally stand amongst them in society. Countries like India are the biggest example of one such situation. Many cities and states in India and some Muslim countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh etc find it difficult to let women breathe freely. In fact, in many parts of India, a girl child is still considered a burden. This is because they think that she is a responsibility and will go away after marriage while a boy child will grow up to become an earning member of the family and would take care of everything.
But who promoted this mentality. Why wouldn’t a girl support their family in financial terms if she is allowed to do so? The orthodox mentality of many individuals doesn’t let this happen so easily. They don’t their girls and women go out & let them work in an open environment. This is where the demand comes for equality.
People living in metro cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai talk about women equality. But these places already have a lot of women working and living independently. These places don’t need feminism. Feminism is needed where women or girls are being dominated and suppressed. Many Indian villagers do not send their female ward to schools or out of their houses, restricting them to household work. A typical village girl from many backward areas has to lead a pre-structured life in a limited manner. These are the places which call for feminism.
In a recent event that happened on June 2019, a few days or weeks old girl children were abandoned in a garbage dump by unknown people in Nagpur city. The girl was in poor condition and was left open amidst a pile of garbage. She could have died from infection, disease, cold or fever due to her surrounding or the weather.
As soon as the news spread across the internet, a journalist couple came forward to show their concern for the child on Twitter. They even requested people to update them with anything about the girl as they wished to adopt her. The god has his ways of doing miracles and indeed they managed to get a connection to adopt the girl.
You can read about it here in detail:
Indian Journalist Couple Adopts Baby Girl Abandoned On Garbage Dump, Restore Faith In Humanity
In the 1990s, nearly 25 years ago from today, 30,000+ women and men arrived in Beijing, China from nearly 200 countries from around the world to attend the Fourth World Conference on Women. This conference was determined to recognize the rights of women and girls as human rights. In the coming years, this agenda was forwarded, promoted and lead around the world by men and women equally. The global movement focuses on equality in every range from sexual and reproductive health rights to equal pay for women.
As a result, we can see that many women from around the world are attending & completing schools, becoming professionals & entrepreneurs, taking care of their families while gaining the skills they need to excel in the future world of work.
In recent years, the movement has paced up to widen its scope towards adolescent girls, and tackling issues like child marriage, education inequality, gender-based violence, climate change, self-esteem, and girls’ rights to enter places of worship or public spaces during menstruation. Women are proving that they are the equal gender of society & men are supporting them.
The year 2019’s theme for International Day of Girl Child is “GirlForce: Unscripted and unstoppable”. UN is aiming to celebrate this day in 2019 with and for girls since the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. A day to prove that girls are unscripted and unstoppable.
