United Nations, Oct 13 The UN has lauded efforts by India to combat child marriage and strengthen the rights of the girl child, saying the country has shown that sustained investment and large-scale community engagement can drive real and meaningful change.
The Permanent Missions of India and Sierra Leone to the UN co-hosted an event Monday on the theme ‘Investing in Girl Child – Transforming Our Future’ to commemorate the International Day of the Girl child.
Addressing the event, Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF Hannan Sulieman noted that the theme carries a simple but powerful message that “when girls thrive, societies thrive.”
“India is home to the world’s largest adolescent population, with 253 million adolescents. That means progress for girls in India has significance far beyond its borders,” Sulieman said.
“India has shown that sustained investment, large-scale community engagement, and policy action can drive real, meaningful change. Over the past decade, girls’ education has improved significantly, reflecting growing recognition of girls’ value within families,” Sulieman said.
She added that child marriage in India has declined thanks, in part, to whole-of-government and whole-of-community approaches like the campaign on child marriage-free India.
In his address, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Parvathaneni Harish outlined the country’s initiatives leveraging leadership commitment, mass-scale and sustained community engagement, and digital public infrastructure.
He cited the example of the ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ program that helped address social biases, improve welfare service delivery and enhance girls’ school enrollment.
“There is no doubt that investing in the future of the girl child delivers unmatched compounding returns. For example, education of a girl child ensures generational knowledge. It translates into increased marriageable age, enhanced skills, access to employment opportunities, financial stability for women- all of which cumulatively contribute to prosperous families and an increase in per capita GDP,” he said.
The Indian envoy stressed that focusing on women and girls’ health reduces infant mortality and enhances access to health services, which translates into healthier children and societies. “Thus, they have a direct positive impact on social development and economic growth of a country,” he said.
Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Sierra Leone Jeneba Bangura emphasised that when a girl is denied education, forced into early marriage, or held back by gender bias, “we lose her potential.”
But when a girl is educated, protected, healthy and empowered, she transforms her life, her family, her community and her country, Bangura added.
Harish shared an example from his own student days, when he was an engineering graduate student in college and there were no girls in his mechanical engineering class.
“It was an all-male mechanical engineering class because it was considered a discipline which was male. And today, almost 70 per cent of the class in my university are girls. It is making real progress in our own lifetimes,” he said.
He also highlighted the current issues in the digital domain.
“We only hear of ‘Tech bros’, we don’t hear of ‘Tech sisters’,” Harish said, adding that AI is increasingly becoming a male-dominated domain and it will have its own impact on how these powerful technologies shape thinking and shape the use of this technology in day-to-day lives.
“How can we make the cyber domain a safe space for women and girls? That’s an important area for us to work on,” he said.
India is ensuring that digital tools, including digital public infrastructure, become a force multiplier for girls’ education. “This is an area where all of us as member states can focus on, so that the emerging AI domain becomes girl-friendly and women-friendly in general,” Harish said.
(PTI News)
