Each year International Day of the Girl is observed on 11 October, the theme for this year is Girls’ Progress = Goals’ Progress: What Counts for Girls.

The world’s 1.1 billion girls are our next generation leaders and experts, their potential and talents must be harnessed to allow them to reach their full potential. Their passion and creativity can help create a truly sustainable world. Yet, very often this passion and creativity is thwarted by gender based biases which can be found in norms, policies and laws in every country across the world, they are simply discriminated just for being girls. Girls remain the single most marginalised group on the planet and their specific needs and concerns are consistently neglected, rendering their experiences invisible to global policymakers. Tens of millions of girls throughout the world continue to face the double discrimination of being young and female.

School girls chat in the morning before class at lower Solu Khumbu District, Nepal. Photo credit: Australian Himalayan Foundation.

The theme for this year’s International Day of the Girl Child calls for increased global action to collect and analyse girl focused, girl relevant and sex-disaggregated data. Without this information it will be difficult to properly and fully identify the gaps and challenges facing girls’ empowerment as part of sustainable development.

For more information please visit: UN Day of the Girl Child