Online Reporter
Ronald Takudzwa Sambona
Correspondent
THE UNICEF Gender Equality Action Plan describes gender equality as a core principle for achieving children’s rights in its Strategic Plan (2026–2029).
A 2024 research paper published by the Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC), titled: Reaching and teaching adolescent girls: How do we make an education system ‘fit for purpose’?, identified multiple stressors that hinder the progress we demand for girls’ education.
Girls’ education advocate, Malala Yousafzai, is renowned for her indefatigable struggle against the Taliban to ensure that girls access the education they seek, but she cannot do it alone. Why?
As GEC has shown, it is not just conflict or crisis that denies girls the education they seek, but a wide range of factors.
My piece today is not a shrewd call to arms against the Taliban, because we all know how that will play out, but it is a call to action to unite for her education, to unite for her rights, to unite for her future.
Leave No Girl Behind (LNGB), a project initiated by the Girls’ Education Challenge, found that 53 percent of adolescent girls (aged 10 to 19) have never been to school.
These girls who are discriminated against will never get to know about their rights because of ignorance and oppression.
Luckily, UNICEF provides six pathways for action to achieve progress. When we mobilise and maximise resources for girls’ education, we are casting a vote for progress.
When we strengthen the power and influence of women, girls and their organisations, we are casting a vote for progress.
When we prioritise actions for girls and women in humanitarian crises, we are casting a vote for progress. When we come together around our shared beliefs and basic humanity, the number 53 becomes zero. That is the whole-hearted commitment we demand for girls in this era.
A staggering 66 percent of Leave No Girl Behind (LNGB) girls have high domestic chore burdens.
I come from a family where my mother does both the domestic chores and provision for the family.
In other words, “her hands are already tied before she comes back home from her work as an educator.”
Every day she wakes up at 4am, leaves for school around 6am, and comes back home at around 4pm. She is as busy as a bee, but she has to be there for her children.
Oscar Wilde said: “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.”
Our girls need more room and space to grow, learn and develop themselves without the burdens and demands of this world.
Dear girl child, believe in yourself. The world will give you lots of burdens, and it is your job to deny everything that has nothing to do with your education.
The figures from Leave No Girl Behind (LNGB) are mind-boggling if you think about it. 28 percent of girls are married. 29 percent of girls are pregnant or are young mothers. 46 percent of girls come from poor households (i.e. unable to meet basic needs like education).
66 percent of girls are in conflict or fragile countries. All these staggering figures reveal a clear absence of care and lack of commitment to girls’ education, yet some of us still want to deny this injustice.
What moral or legal reasoning are we using to justify all these human rights violations?
If not morality or reason, let the love we hold for our mothers and sisters move us towards the progress we demand for girls. I pass to you an invitation, not to wage war against society, but to wage war against our shared enemies of girls’ education: poverty, domestic abuse, child marriage, pregnancies, and war itself. Will you join us in that historic endeavour?
Thank you! I rest my case.
