Investments in girls' rights remain limited and girls continue to confront a myriad of challenges to fulfilling their potential which got made worse by concurrent crises of climate change, Covid-19 and humanitarian conflict and crisis.
With this phenomenon in view, stakeholders at a national dialogue also have called for investing in girls’ agency, leadership, and potential to end their persistent hurdles and barriers.
They urged for coming together with renewed vigour to drastically address systemic and underlying barriers that hold girls back and accelerate action not only to redress current disparities arising from Covid-19 but also close pre-pandemic gender gaps for girls’ empowerment.
They came up with the remarks and called at the function to commemorate International Day of the Girls (IDG) –2022 under the theme of this year- Our time is now- our rights, our future at a city hotel on Tuesday.
The UNICEF Bangladesh ,Save the Children and Plan International Bangladesh arranged the dialogue.
In the last 10 years of the IDG, there has been increased attention on issues that matter to girls amongst governments, policymakers and the general public, and more opportunities for girls to have their voices heard on the global stage.
Education Minister Dipu Moni, State Minister for ICT Division Zunaid Ahmed Palak, Dr Mohiuddin Ahmed, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Women and Children Affairs (MoWCA), Nathalie Chuard, Ambassador, Embassy of Switzerland, and Jeremy Bruer, High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, among others, attended the event.
Addressing the dialogue as the chief guest, Dr. Dipu Moni said the curriculum of the country's education system is getting changed to include ‘coding’ for students in class three to five.
Not only girls but also boys should be made aware to prevent child marriage, he said, adding that the government is going to start piloting a new curriculum to create opportunities for overall development for all, regardless of gender.
Zunaid Ahmed Palak said the ICT Division has developed software for marriage and divorce registrations, and will make arrangements to launch it after getting approval from the government including the law ministry.
Dr Mohiuddin Ahmed said under the MoWCA, there are more than 7,000 adolescent-based clubs across the country and also is an Accelerating Protection of Children (APC) programme for children.
Bangladesh has ranked 1st among South Asian countries for eliminating the gender gap in primary and secondary education with a net attendance ratio of 1.11 for primary school students.
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