UNICEF wants more and more girls in school!

International development efforts are drastically short-changing girls, leaving hundreds of millions of girls and women uneducated and unable to contribute to positive change for themselves, their children, or their communities, a major UNICEF report released on 11 December 2003 contends.

The agency said that without accelerated action to get more girls into school over the next two years, global goals to reduce poverty and improve the human condition would simply not be reached. Conversely, it said that bringing down the barriers that keep girls out of school would benefit both girls and boys and their countries.

UNICEF argued that the adjustment in development strategies needed to get girls in school and keep them there would jump-start progress on the entire development agenda for 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals.

The report shows that the girls denied an education are more vulnerable to poverty, hunger, violence, abuse, exploitation and trafficking. They are more likely to die in childbirth and are at greater risk of disease, including HIV/AIDS. But according to the State o the World’s Children, the positive impact of educating girls is equally dramatic: As mothers, educated women are more likely to have healthy children, and more likely to ensure that their children, both boys and girls, complete school.

In example after example, the UNICEF report details how bringing down the barriers that keep girls out of the school makes schools more welcoming for boys as well as girls. Those barriers include schools that are too far from home, lack clean water and separate toilet facilities, and where the threat of violence is ever-present in and around the schoolyard.

The report argues that the standard approach to achieving universal education has fallen short because it assumed that generic efforts to enroll more children would benefit all children equally, an assumption that has not examined or addressed the specific barriers faced by girls. Although global enrollments show gradual improvement in gender balance, 9 million more girls are still left out of the classroom completely, and girls who are enrolled drop out faster, on average, than boys.

"Because of persistent and often subtle gender discrimination that runs through most societies, it is girls who are sacrificed first – being the last enrolled and the first withdrawn from schools when times get tough," the report states.

The report arguments that the education must be approached as a human right rather than a privilege or an expected outcome of economic progress. When education is considered a right, governments are obligated to mobilize the needed resources so that all children can complete a quality education. And parents are more likely to hold their governments accountable for failing to do so.

The report presents an agenda for action, calling on development agencies, governments, families, and communities to focus and intensify their efforts on addressing the challenges that keep girls out of the school. Essentially, the report calls for adjustments in how development is approached from the start.

Among separate measures, the report calls for:
* Creation of national ethos recognizing the values of educating girls as well as boys.
* Education to be included as an essential component in development plans.
* The elimination of school fees of every kink.
* The integration of education into national plans for poverty education.
* Increased international funding for education.

The report found that, with few exceptions, industrialized countries and international financial institutions have failed to meet their commitments to fund education.