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Financing Gender Equality in Education
Financing Gender Equality in Education
NEW YORK (29 February 2008) – Connecting the priority theme of this year’s 52nd session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women with last year’s focus on the girl child, a workshop titled “Financing Gender Equality in Education”and sponsored by the NGO Committee on UNICEF’s Working Group on Girls addressed the need to promote funding for programs specifically aimed at improving conditions for girls.
“The recommendations we make are designed to keep the girl child visible in the consultations of the Commission and its reports and resolutions” said Fulya Vekiloglu, co-chair of the Working Group on Girls, and a representative of the Bahá’í International Community to the United Nations. “It is essential to provide resources to development projects for girls, and the need for gender and age disaggregated data to more accurately understand the realities that need to be addressed.” Said Ms. Vekiloglu.
The 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing put the girl child in the forefront of the global agenda, Ms. Vekiloglu said, and cast a light on violence against girls and such disturbing practices as female genital mutilation, female infanticide and child marriage. Recent evidence confirms that efforts to keep the issue of the plight of the girl child alive are having an impact. The General Assembly has reaffirmed the rights of the girl child in a resolution in November 2007 and referred to the “Agreed Conclusions” from the 51st session of the Commission.
Liv Indreiten of UNICEF presented the main points of the “Agreed Conclusions” from the 51st Session of the Commission. (available as E/CN.6/2007/9, pps. 7-19, at: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/csw51/OfficialDocuments.html).
Ms. Indreiten reviewed the norms and policies from the document, which includes: integrating a gender perspective into all policies; providing education, training, and opportunities for girls, particularly regarding information technology; providing adequate health services, especially for HIV/AIDS, teenage mothers, and eliminating gender stereotypes.
Carolyn Hannan, director of the UN’s Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), said of the agreed conclusions “Don’t let them die, make sure they become known and utilized.”
