Empower Girl Child
EGM/DVGC/2006/EP.8 __________________________________________________________________________ United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) in collaboration with UNICEF Expert Group Meeting Elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre Florence, Italy, 25-28 September 2006
Girl child empowerment: A challenge for all
Prepared by * Nicole Bidegain Ponte
* The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the United Nations
In the next lines I propose to integrate the agenda of sexual and reproductive rights with the ordinary life of girls and adolescents. I will put forward good practices and make proposals to move forward on empowering and offsetting the discrimination that girls are suffering daily in Latin America. Myths and fears always appear when we talk about sexuality. This is increased when we think of sexuality and childhood. However, sexuality is part of our lives since our birth and to grow up healthy, scientific information about our body is needed. For a very long time the movement for rights related to sexuality and reproduction was dissociated from the movements promoting children rights. It is necessary to rebuild this bridge and to think of actions tending to the achievement of girl child rights, including her sexual rights. This is the most assertive path for the real empowerment of girls and women. If we can’t decide what happen in our bodies, neither we will decide other issues which concern our citizenship like vote, community involvement, etc. Who are the girl children? In order to design any policy, the first step is to clarify our framework. I propose to define girl children as a socially constructed category around female persons between 0 and 18 years. Childhood is built on the cross road with other identities we have as individuals. Ethnicity, class, nationality, family environment, sexual
Girl child empowerment: A challenge for all
Prepared by * Nicole Bidegain Ponte
* The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the United Nations
In the next lines I propose to integrate the agenda of sexual and reproductive rights with the ordinary life of girls and adolescents. I will put forward good practices and make proposals to move forward on empowering and offsetting the discrimination that girls are suffering daily in Latin America. Myths and fears always appear when we talk about sexuality. This is increased when we think of sexuality and childhood. However, sexuality is part of our lives since our birth and to grow up healthy, scientific information about our body is needed. For a very long time the movement for rights related to sexuality and reproduction was dissociated from the movements promoting children rights. It is necessary to rebuild this bridge and to think of actions tending to the achievement of girl child rights, including her sexual rights. This is the most assertive path for the real empowerment of girls and women. If we can’t decide what happen in our bodies, neither we will decide other issues which concern our citizenship like vote, community involvement, etc. Who are the girl children? In order to design any policy, the first step is to clarify our framework. I propose to define girl children as a socially constructed category around female persons between 0 and 18 years. Childhood is built on the cross road with other identities we have as individuals. Ethnicity, class, nationality, family environment, sexual