The Girl Child

A/RES/76/146View PDF

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 70aPromotion and protection of the rights of children, published in 2021.

What other versions does this mandate have?

19 versions · 1996–2023

This is an older version — the most recent is A/RES/78/188

2023A/RES/78/188The girl childLatestCompare with previous version
2022A/RES/76/146The girl childCompare with previous version
2020A/RES/74/134The girl childCompare with previous version
2018A/RES/72/154The girl childCompare with previous version
2016A/RES/70/138The girl childCompare with previous version

Versions are identified automatically by matching titles within the same organ (~97% accuracy on a manual audit).

What subjects does this mandate have?

6 topics

Anti-Discrimination Measures Child Welfare Covid-19 Gender Equality Girls Rights of the Child

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

1 report of the Secretary-General submitted under this mandate, 2023.

2023A/78/284Impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on girls and the recovery from it report of the Secretary-General

Identified automatically from the metadata in each report’s UN Digital Library catalogue record.

What does this mandate say?

53 operative paragraphs

Takes note of the report of the Secretary-General;

Stresses the need for the full and urgent implementation of the rights of the child, including the girl child, as provided under international human rights instruments, and urges States to consider signing and ratifying or acceding to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Optional Protocols thereto as a matter of priority;

Urges all States that have not yet ratified or acceded to the Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138), and the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182), of the International Labour Organization to consider doing so;

Urges States to develop or review relevant programmes that promote gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls and equal access to basic social services, such as education, nutrition, water and sanitation, birth registration, health care, vaccinations and protection from diseases representing the major causes of mortality, including non-communicable diseases, and to mainstream a gender perspective into all development policies and programmes, including those specific to the girl child;

Calls upon all countries to extend coverage of social protection, inter alia, through nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all girls, including floors, and, by 2030, achieve substantial coverage of persons living in poverty and in vulnerable situations, while stressing the importance of taking targeted measures to eradicate poverty in all its forms and dimensions everywhere, including extreme poverty, with enhanced international support and strengthened global partnerships, and notes the need for countries, the United Nations development system and all relevant stakeholders to ensure and promote a multidimensional coordinated approach in their work and efforts to eradicate poverty;

Urges States to improve the situation of girl children living in poverty, including extreme poverty, deprived of adequate food and nutrition, water and sanitation facilities, with limited or no access to basic physical and mental health-care services, shelter, education, participation and protection;

Encourages States and other relevant actors to implement cross-cutting and integrated gender-responsive policies and programmes that tackle all forms of discrimination, which are often compounded, against girls in rural areas and that respond to the multidimensional aspects of adolescent girls’ lives, while taking into account the specific needs and views of girls, including those living in rural and remote areas, in particular with regard to COVID-19 pandemic recovery efforts;

Urges States and other relevant actors to consider strengthening multisectoral child protection systems, to prevent trafficking in girls and violence in all its forms, and ensure holistic support for girls who are at greater risk of experiencing, or who have experienced, violence, harassment, exploitation and abuse, including online and offline, and harmful practices such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation, while paying special attention to girls with disabilities and girls in vulnerable situations, including indigenous girls and girls facing social and economic exclusion, including those living in rural and remote areas;

Recognizes that ensuring equal access to inclusive, equitable and quality education requires transformations in education systems, mainstreaming a gender perspective into educational programmes, infrastructure development and teacher training, and in this regard calls upon States to invest in quality education, including through adequate financing, to ensure that all girls, including those who are marginalized or in vulnerable situations, enjoy their right to education;

Calls upon Member States to work with relevant stakeholders, including the private sector and civil society, to take steps to bridge the digital divide, including the gender digital divide where it exists, within and among countries as part of the efforts to ensure the empowerment and safety of all young women and girls, including those living in rural and remote areas, including by providing distance learning opportunities, especially in developing countries;

Emphasizes the importance of the right of girls to education and the continuation of learning, acknowledging that during the COVID-19 pandemic adolescent girls, as well as girls with disabilities, are at particular risk of dropping out and not returning to school even as education facilities reopen, thereby increasing their vulnerability to poverty, child, early and forced marriage, violence and early pregnancy;

Calls upon Member States, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, to ensure that school closures are a last resort and are proportionate to wider public health restrictions and that girls are protected and supported in returning to school once it is deemed safe to do so, and in this regard calls upon Member States and other relevant stakeholders to take the appropriate measures in order to ensure proper training of teachers and other educational professionals and the availability of and access to learning materials and remote learning platforms during the pandemic, and to bridge the digital divide, including barriers such as poor access to connectivity, lack of affordability of connection and devices, limited digital skills, absence of locally relevant digital content, and gender stereotypes and negative social norms, in order to provide distance learning opportunities, inter alia, Internet, television and radio teaching alternatives, especially in developing countries;

Notes the role of the United Nations in supporting national Governments in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and in realizing girls’ right to education;

Calls upon States to recognize the right to education on the basis of equal opportunity and non-discrimination by making primary education compulsory and available free to all children, including those living in rural areas, and ensuring that all children have equal access to quality education, as well as making secondary and tertiary education available and accessible to all, in particular through the progressive introduction of free secondary education, bearing in mind that special measures to ensure equal access, including affirmative action, ensuring physical access to education, including by increasing financial incentives to families, improving the safety of girls on the way to and from school, ensuring that all schools are accessible, safe, secure and free from violence and providing hygienic, separate and adequate sanitation facilities, contribute to achieving equal opportunity and combating exclusion and ensuring school attendance, in particular for girls and children from low-income families and children who become heads of households;

Calls upon all States to place enhanced emphasis on quality education for the girl child, including catch-up and literacy education for those who did not receive formal education, special initiatives for keeping girls in school through post-primary education, including those who are already married or pregnant, to promote access to skills and entrepreneurship training for young women and to tackle gender stereotypes, in order to ensure that young women entering the labour market have opportunities to obtain full and productive employment and decent work, and equal pay for equal work or work of equal value;

Encourages States to promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, eliminating female illiteracy and promoting financial and digital literacy, ensuring that girls have equal access to leadership training, career development, scholarships and fellowships, strive to ensure the completion of quality early childhood, primary and secondary education, expand vocational and technical education for all girls and foster, as appropriate, intercultural and multilingual education for all, and address negative social norms and gender stereotypes in education systems;

Also encourages States to adopt, as appropriate, and implement inclusive policies and programmes to promote girls’ education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, including information and communications technology, throughout their education, by, inter alia, expanding the scope of education and training opportunities ranging from basic digital fluency to advanced technical skills, recognizing that girls who develop such skills may enjoy more academic success and higher-paying jobs in the future, and recognizing also that girls and women have an equally important role to play in these arenas as men and boys;

Calls upon States, with the support, where appropriate, of international organizations, civil society and non-governmental organizations, to develop policies and programmes, giving priority to formal, informal and non-formal education programmes, including scientifically accurate and age-appropriate comprehensive education, relevant to cultural contexts, that provides adolescent girls and boys and young women and men in and out of school, consistent with their evolving capacities, and with appropriate direction and guidance from parents and legal guardians, with information on sexual and reproductive health and HIV prevention, gender equality and women’s empowerment, human rights, physical, psychological and pubertal development and power in relationships between women and men, to enable them to build self-esteem and informed decision-making, communication and risk reduction skills and to develop respectful relationships, in full partnership with young persons, parents, legal guardians, caregivers, educators and health-care providers, in order to, inter alia, enable them to protect themselves from HIV infection and other risks;

Urges States to acknowledge the different needs of girls and boys during their childhood and adolescence and, as appropriate, to make adapted investments that are consistent with and responsive to their changing needs, in particular ensuring that girls have access to clean water, including safe drinking water, sanitation, hygiene and feminine hygiene products as well as private toilet facilities, including feminine hygiene product disposal facilities, in educational institutions and other public spaces, which will improve their health and access to education and increase their safety;

Calls upon States, in collaboration with civil society and other relevant actors, to promote educational and health practices in order to foster a culture in which menstruation is recognized as healthy and natural, and girls are not stigmatized on this basis, recognizing that girls’ attendance at school can be affected by negative perceptions of menstruation and lack of means to maintain safe personal hygiene, such as water, sanitation and hygiene facilities in schools that meet the needs of girls;

Urges States to strengthen efforts to urgently eradicate all forms of discrimination against women and girls, and calls upon all States, the United Nations system and civil society to take measures to address the obstacles that continue to affect the achievement of the goals set forth in the Beijing Platform for Action, as contained in paragraph 33 of the further actions and initiatives, including reviewing remaining laws that discriminate against women and girls in order to modify or abolish them and, where appropriate, strengthening national mechanisms to implement inclusive policies and programmes for the girl child and, in some cases, to enhance coordination among responsible institutions for the realization of the human rights of girls, including access to justice, fighting impunity for perpetrators of and ensuring the availability of appropriate penalties for crimes of sexual violence committed against the girl child, and to mobilize all necessary resources and support in order to achieve those goals;

Also urges States to ensure that the applicable conventions of the International Labour Organization relating to the employment of girls and boys are respected and effectively enforced and that girls who are employed have equal access to decent work and equal pay for equal work or work of equal value, are protected from economic and sexual exploitation, discrimination, sexual harassment, violence and abuse in the workplace, are aware of their rights and have access to formal and non-formal education, skills development and technical and vocational training, and urges States to develop gender-sensitive measures, including national action plans, where appropriate, to eliminate child labour and its worst forms, commercial sexual exploitation, hazardous forms of child labour, trafficking and slavery-like practices, including forced and bonded labour, and the recruitment or use of children in armed conflict in violation of applicable international law, and to recognize that girls, including those living in rural and remote areas, face greater risks in this regard;

Calls upon States, with the support of relevant stakeholders, including the private sector, civil society, non-governmental organizations and community-based organizations, as appropriate, to take measures to ensure the right of girls to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including through the development and enforcement of policies, programmes and legal frameworks and the strengthening of health systems that make universally accessible and available quality, gender-responsive, adolescent-friendly health services, menstrual hygiene, information and commodities, including for sexual and reproductive health-care services, HIV/AIDS, and mental health services and nutrition interventions;

Also calls upon States to strengthen the capacity of national health systems, and in this regard invites the international community to assist national efforts, upon request, including by allocating adequate resources in order to provide the essential services needed to prevent obstetric fistula and to treat those cases that occur by providing the continuum of services, including family planning, prenatal and postnatal care, skilled birth attendance, emergency obstetric care and post-partum care, to adolescent girls, including those living in poverty and in underserved rural areas where obstetric fistula is most common;

Urges all States to enact, uphold and strictly enforce laws and policies aimed at preventing and ending child, early and forced marriage and protecting those at risk and to ensure that marriage is entered into only with the informed, free and full consent of the intending spouses, to enact and strictly enforce laws concerning the minimum legal age of consent and the minimum age for marriage, to raise the minimum age for marriage, engage all relevant stakeholders, including girls, where necessary, and ensure that these laws are well known, and national judicial systems are fit, and to further develop and implement holistic, comprehensive and coordinated policies, plans of action and programmes and to support already married girls and adolescents, ensure the provision of viable alternatives and institutional support, ensure access to quality educational opportunities, and increase access to quality and safe schooling for girls, including those living in rural areas, to ensure the survival, protection, development and advancement of the girl child in order to promote and protect the full enjoyment of her human rights and to ensure equal opportunities for girls, including by making such plans an integral part of her total development process;

Urges States to enact, as appropriate, and implement legislation to protect, support and empower children living in child-headed households, in particular those headed by girls, that includes provisions to ensure their physical, psychosocial and economic well-being, including protecting their property and inheritance rights, access to health-care services, nutrition, clean water, including safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, shelter, education, scholarships and training opportunities, and that their family is protected and assisted in staying together, including through, where appropriate, social protection programmes and economic support;

Also urges States to forge partnerships with relevant stakeholders, particularly by working with and involving communities in developing programmes and mechanisms designed to ensure the safety and protection as well as the empowerment of children, especially girls, and to ensure that they receive the support that they need from their communities;

Calls upon States to strengthen research, data collection and analysis on the girl child, disaggregated by household structure, sex, age, disability, economic situation, marital and migratory status, geographical location and other characteristics relevant in national contexts, and improve gender statistics on time use, unpaid care work and water and sanitation in order to provide a better understanding of the situations of girls, especially of the multiple forms of discrimination that they face, and to inform the development of necessary policies and programme responses, which should take a holistic, gender-sensitive, age-appropriate approach to addressing the full range of the forms of discrimination that girls may face, in order to promote, respect, protect and fulfil their rights effectively;

Urges States to take all measures necessary to ensure the full enjoyment by girls with disabilities of all human rights and fundamental freedoms, on an equal basis with other children, and to adopt, implement and strengthen appropriate policies and programmes designed to address their needs;

Urges all States to enact and enforce legislation to protect girls from all forms of violence, discrimination, exploitation and harmful practices in all settings, including female infanticide and prenatal sex selection, female genital mutilation, rape, domestic violence, incest, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, child prostitution, child pornography and other child sexual abuse material, trafficking and forced migration, forced labour and child, early and forced marriage, and to develop age-appropriate, safe, confidential and disability-accessible programmes and medical, social and psychological support services to assist girls who are subjected to violence and discrimination;

Urges States to strengthen and intensify their efforts to prevent and eliminate all forms of school-related violence against girls and to hold perpetrators accountable;

Calls upon all States to enact and enforce the necessary legislative or other measures, in cooperation with relevant stakeholders, including the private sector and the media, to prevent the distribution over the Internet of child pornography and other child sexual abuse material, ensuring that adequate mechanisms are in place to enable the reporting and removal of such material and that its creators, distributors and collectors are prosecuted, as appropriate;

Urges States to formulate or review, as needed, comprehensive, multidisciplinary and coordinated national plans, programmes or strategies to eliminate all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls, which should have dedicated resources, be widely disseminated and provide targets and timetables for implementation, as well as effective domestic enforcement procedures through the establishment of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms involving all parties concerned, including consultations with women’s organizations, giving attention to the recommendations relating to the girl child of the Special Rapporteurs of the Human Rights Council on violence against women, its causes and consequences, and on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, and of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children;

Also urges States to ensure that children who are capable of forming their own views have the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting them, with the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child, to ensure that this right is fully and equally enjoyed by the girl child, to meaningfully involve girl children, including those with special needs, as well as girls with disabilities, and their representative organizations in decision-making processes, as appropriate, and to include them as full partners in identifying their own needs and in developing, planning, implementing and assessing policies and programmes to meet those needs, with a view to ensuring their full and effective participation;

Recognizes that a considerable number of girl children are particularly vulnerable, including orphans, children living on the street, internally displaced and refugee children, children affected by trafficking and sexual and economic exploitation, children living with or affected by HIV and AIDS, and children who are incarcerated or who live without parental support, and therefore urges States, with the support of the international community, where relevant, to take appropriate measures to address the needs of such children by implementing national, subregional and regional policies and strategies to build and strengthen governmental, community and family capacities to provide a supportive environment for such children, including by providing appropriate counselling and psychosocial support, and ensuring their safety, enrolment in school and access to shelter, good nutrition and health and social services on an equal basis with other children;

Urges all States and the international community to respect, promote and protect the rights of the girl child, taking into account the particular vulnerabilities of the girl child in pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict situations and in climate-related and other hazards and natural disasters, as well as in other humanitarian emergencies, and urges States to take special measures for the protection of girls in all phases of humanitarian emergencies, from relief to recovery, and in particular to ensure that children have access to basic services, which include clean water, including safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, to protect them from sexually transmitted infections, including HIV infection, gender-based violence, including rape, sexual abuse and sexual exploitation, torture, abduction and trafficking, including forced labour, paying special attention to refugee, migrant and displaced girls, and to take into account their special needs in disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation assistance and reintegration processes;

Calls upon States to ensure that the perspectives and priorities of girls, including those living in rural and remote areas, as well as in poverty are taken into account in armed conflict and post-conflict situations and in humanitarian emergencies and that they fully, equally and meaningfully participate, in accordance with the age and maturity of the child, in the design, implementation, follow-up and evaluation of policies and programmes related to conflict prevention, peace mediation, peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction, recognizing the contributions of all members of society to raise awareness and advocate combating the stigmatization of children, including girls affected by armed conflict;

Deplores all acts of sexual exploitation and abuse of and trafficking in women and children, including in humanitarian crises and by humanitarian workers and peacekeepers, including military, police and civilian personnel involved in United Nations operations, takes note of the voluntary compact on preventing and addressing sexual exploitation and abuse introduced by the Secretary-General, welcomes the efforts undertaken by United Nations agencies and peacekeeping operations to implement a zero-tolerance policy in this regard, and requests the Secretary-General or the Member States from which those humanitarian workers originate and personnel-contributing countries to continue to take all appropriate action necessary to combat such abuses and exploitation by such personnel, including through the full implementation without delay of those measures adopted in the relevant General Assembly resolutions based on recommendations of the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations;

Calls upon Member States to devise, enforce and strengthen effective child- and youth-sensitive measures to combat, eliminate and prosecute all forms of trafficking in women and girls, including for sexual and economic exploitation, as part of a comprehensive anti-trafficking strategy within wider efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls, including by taking effective measures against the criminalization of girls who are victims of exploitation and ensuring that girls who have been exploited receive access to the necessary psychosocial support, and in this regard urges Member States, the United Nations and other international, regional and subregional organizations, as well as civil society, including non-governmental organizations, the private sector and the media, to fully and effectively implement the relevant provisions of the United Nations Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons and the activities outlined therein, with full respect for the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime;

Reaffirms that everyone has a right to a nationality as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in this regard calls upon States that have not yet done so to consider adopting and implementing nationality legislation consistent with their applicable obligations under international law and to facilitate the acquisition of nationality by and ensure free or low-cost birth registration for children born on their territories or their nationals abroad who would otherwise be stateless;

Calls upon Governments, civil society, including the media, and non-governmental organizations to promote human rights education and full respect for and the enjoyment of the human rights of the girl child, inter alia, through the translation, production and dissemination of age-appropriate and gender-sensitive information material on those rights to all sectors of society, in particular to children;

Requests the Secretary-General, as Chair of the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination, to ensure that all organizations and bodies of the United Nations system, individually and collectively, in particular the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the World Food Programme, the United Nations Population Fund, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women), the World Health Organization, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, the United Nations Development Programme, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Labour Organization, take into account the rights and the particular needs of the girl child in country programmes of cooperation in accordance with national priorities, including through the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework;

Requests all human rights treaty bodies and the human rights mechanisms of the Human Rights Council, including the special procedures, to adopt regularly and systematically a gender perspective in the implementation of their mandates and to include in their reports information on the qualitative analysis of violations of the human rights of women and girls, and encourages the strengthening of cooperation and coordination in that regard;

Requests States to ensure that, in all policies and programmes designed to provide comprehensive HIV and AIDS prevention, treatment, care and support, particular attention and support are given to the girl child at risk of, living with or affected by HIV, including pregnant girls and young and adolescent mothers and girls with disabilities, and child heads of households, with a view to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 3, in particular the target of ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030;

Invites States to promote initiatives aimed at developing new and affordable antiretroviral drugs and HIV diagnostics, especially second-line drugs, and point-of-care diagnostics that are child-friendly, as well as investments in female-controlled methods of HIV prevention and their rapid roll-out, including through bilateral and private sector initiatives as well as initiatives on a voluntary basis taken by groups of States, including those based on innovative financing mechanisms that contribute to the mobilization of resources for social development, including those that aim to provide further access to drugs at affordable prices to developing countries on a sustainable and predictable basis, and in this regard takes note of the international drug purchase facility, Unitaid;

Calls upon all States to integrate food and nutritional support with the goal that children, especially girl children, have access at all times to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food requirements for an active and healthy life;

Calls upon States to ensure that social protection programmes, including HIV-sensitive programmes, are provided to orphans and other vulnerable children, with particular attention to addressing the needs and vulnerabilities of girl children, ensuring school attendance and protecting their rights;

Urges States and other relevant actors to scale up social protection programmes, including other social safety nets and poverty alleviation programmes that are gender-sensitive in design and implementation, to address the specific needs of girls, including of those living in rural and remote areas, and prevent deepening poverty and social exclusion and educational barriers as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic;

Urges States and the international community to increase resources at all levels, particularly in the education and health sectors, so as to enable young people, especially girls, to gain the knowledge, attitudes and life skills that they need to fulfil their social, economic and other potential and overcome their challenges, including the prevention of HIV infection and early pregnancy, and to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including sexual and reproductive health;

Urges States, the international community, relevant United Nations entities, civil society and international financial institutions to continue to actively support, through the allocation of financial resources and technical assistance, efforts to address girls’ right and access to education;

Calls upon States and other relevant stakeholders to mobilize resources and increase long-term gender- and age-responsive as well as disability-inclusive investments, also through budget allocations, with the focus on achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all girls, including those living in rural and remote areas, in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and to galvanize relevant private sector investment;

Strongly calls upon States and the international community to create an environment in which the well-being of the girl child is ensured, inter alia, by cooperating, supporting and participating in global efforts towards the full and timely realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development and of all other relevant internationally agreed development goals, in particular for the eradication of poverty at the global, regional and country levels, recognizing that strengthened availability and effective allocation of resources are required at all levels in this regard, and reaffirming that investment in children, particularly girls, and the realization of their rights are among the most effective ways to eradicate poverty;

Requests the Secretary-General to submit a report to the General Assembly at its seventy-eighth session on the implementation of the present resolution, including a status analysis on improvements in the social, economic and political investments made by Member States, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the girl child and the recovery from it, using information provided by Member States, the organizations and bodies of the United Nations system and non-governmental organizations, with a view to assessing the impact of the present resolution on the well-being of the girl child.

Paragraph content is machine-extracted from UN documents. For authoritative content, please refer to the official UN document.

No headings found in this document.

Who created this mandate?

What other versions does this mandate have?

What subjects does this mandate have?

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

What does this mandate say?

Table of contents