Question raised in Lok Sabha on Schemes for youth and women, 02/03/2020.

Nearly 64 million girls were born in 1995, the year the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was adopted, beginning their lives as the global community committed to improving their rights. In 2020, nearly 68 million girls are expected to be born.

Empowering people, ensuring inclusiveness and equality is fundamental to realizing sustainable development. What change is needed to strengthen empowerment and promote inclusion and equality of all people within our efforts to implement the 2030 Agenda, including its central aspiration to leave no one behind?

The global community has good cause to celebrate the progress achieved over the last quarter century in the name of girls’ rights. But we cannot lose sight of the challenges girls still face every day. Twenty-five years ago, the Beijing Platform for Action recognized that childhood is a separate space from adulthood.

The Asia-Pacific Declaration on Advancing Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment: Beijing+25 Review was adopted at a three-day Ministerial Conference, organized by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific in November 2019.

India’s economic growth story has left women behind. Female labour force participation has stagnated, and present labour trends, technological disruptions and restrictive social barriers will likely foment further declines. Over the coming decade, India will have the largest working-age population in the world.

Sericulture farms in India’s northeastern state of Assam, are suddenly witnessing a rush of female workers. Improved connectivity of villages is a major reason for this transformation.

The Free to Shine campaign1 is an initiative of the African Union, the Organization of African First Ladies for Development (OAFLAD) and partners to address the growing complacency in the response to childhood HIV in Africa.

Since unpaid care work is central to women’s selfhood and ascribed identities as daughters, daughters-in-law, wives and mothers, it features integrally in the power dynamics of the household.