"10: How our future depends on a girl at this decisive age": UNFPA State of

"10: How our future depends on a girl at this decisive age": UNFPA State of World Population Report 2016

highlighting a key theme related to our vision of a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled.
This year's SWOP report -- titled "10: How our future depends on a girl at this decisive age" - is the first in the era of the Sustainable Development Goals, focusing on a constituency at the very core of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that the Goals seek to fulfill, with their central pledge of leaving no one behind.

"The age of 10 is a critical juncture in a girl's life," explained Yoriko Yasukawa, UNFPA Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific. "She's still a child. And yet she's approaching that age when many people in many countries start to think of a girl as an asset or a commodity - for work, childbearing or sex.  Impeding a girl's safe, healthy path through adolescence to a productive adulthood is a violation of her rights. But it also takes a toll on her community and nation."

The report notes that of the 125 million 10-year-olds today - more than half of whom live in the Asia-Pacific region -- 60 million are girls, many of whom are systematically disadvantaged as they move through adolescence into adulthood.

Girls are less likely than boys to complete formal schooling at the secondary and university levels, are more likely to be in poorer physical and mental health, and will find it harder to get paid jobs.

Whether a country's economy grows, stagnates or collapses in the future depends in no small way on how well it supports its 10-year-old girls today. Just as a 10-year-old girl is at a turning point in her life as she transitions into adolescence and moves towards adulthood, many developing countries in Asia-Pacific and globally are at a critical demographic juncture, with the emergence of comparatively large populations of adolescents and young people.

Governments have increasingly begun implementing policies aimed at tackling these challenges.

These include banning harmful practices (such as child marriage and female genital mutilation), and providing cash transfers to parents of girls in poor households to help defray costs of schooling and keep girls in school longer.

They also include providing life-skills training and age-appropriate comprehensive sexuality education to girls and boys well before puberty.

A key effort involves sensitizing men and boys to gender equality and equity issues, to ensure the participation of society at large in strengthening and empowering girls to reach their potential.

Indeed, investing in girls results in significant sociocultural, political and economic dividends for countries and societies, as the report clearly shows.The challenge now, the report says, is to scale up these interventions to reach more girls, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, by age 10.

Ten girls, ten stories, representing tens of millions of others

Going beyond data, facts and figures, the 2016 SWOP Report illustrates the human issues at stake through the compelling stories of ten 10-year-old girls from across the world, including Aditi from Noyakata village in Bangladesh and Tuong Anh from Hanoi, the capital city of Viet Nam - very different profiles and settings, yet united by common challenges. 

Each girl featured in the report was asked about her aspirations and dreams, as well as how she perceived her current reality - and their answers reflect both innocence as well as an awareness beyond their young years.

"If you read the stories of these ten children including Aditi and Tuong Anh, and look at the wonderful images the report contains, you'll realize that we don't really have to justify making life better for girls as a step leading to something else that is more important, whether it be economic growth, political stability or even more equal societies," concluded Yasukawa.

"The 2030 Agenda at heart is about building a different vision of what constitutes a good life, as one not merely of material wellbeing but of caring - nations and societies that care for all people, not just the privileged few, people caring for one another and for their communities as a whole. If that's the case, we cannot realize that vision without doing everything we possibly can here and now to ensure that all girls everywhere can enjoy their girlhoods, secure in the love of their families, protected from ill health and violence, free to learn and explore the world as they choose.  So let us take on that challenge today."

Access the full UNFPA State of World Population 2016 Report at http://asiapacific.unfpa.org/publications/state-world-population-2016 and http://www.unfpa.org/SWOP (full interactive online version)

For more SWOP 2016 material, including opinion pieces, visit http://asiapacific.unfpa.org/news/state-world-population-2016

Select statistics/data from the 2016 State of World Population Report:

Of the 10 countries with the largest cohorts of 10-year-olds today, five are in Asia and the Pacific.

The largest numbers of 10-year-olds today are in India and China, which account for about 20 per cent and 12.3 per cent of the world's total, respectively. (In other words, one in five 10-year-olds today lives in India and one in eight lives in China.)

In Asia and the Pacific, at the regional level, there are 111 boys for every 100 girls. This is largely driven by significant differences in the numbers of boys and girls in a handful of countries, including India and China, where there are 112 and 117 boys, respectively, for every 100 girls.

In both India and China,  the uneven sex ratio is largely driven by a strong preference for male children, which results in discrimination against girl children both before they are born (in the form of prenatal sex selection) and afterwards (in the form of discriminatory practices that increase the mortality of girls).

Countries with larger cohorts of 10-year-olds are more likely to be poorer.

Girls are less likely than boys to be enrolled in school, especially at the secondary level.

More adolescents give birth in countries with larger proportions of 10-year-olds in their populations.

Whether she lives in a developing or developed country, a 10-year-old girl today is more likely than her brother to shoulder the burden of domestic duties and unpaid work needed to keep the household functioning.