International Day of the Girl 2023 is celebrated today and every year on 11 October. UNICEF launches
an annual campaign with girls to amplify their voices and stand up for their rights. This year, under
the theme, “Invest in Girls’ Rights: Our Leadership, Our Well-being”, we are urged globally to explore
opportunities for improving resourcing to girls and the issues that affect them.
As adolescent girls worldwide assert their power as change-makers, International Day of the Girl 2023
will focus on their demands to:
1. Center girls in the protection and promotion of rights
2. Recognize, celebrate and support girls’ leadership
3. Introduce and scale up multi-sectoral programs that support adolescent girls’ well-being
4. Ensure information, services and systems meaningfully change to be adolescent-girl-friendly
5. Make structural changes to scale up funding for girls (and not as a one-off)
As a girl mom, I proudly join Unicef to stand for my girls and girls everywhere. There are many ways you
can get involved on this International Day of the Girl 2023:
- Share stories of inspiring adolescent girls or girl-led organizations who are developing innovative solutions
- or leading efforts towards positive social change, including gender equality, in their communities
and nations. Let’s amplify their leadership, actions and impact to inspire others. - Participate in a youth-led digital activation launching on International Day of the Girl. Young people
across the world are developing a digital activism campaign, aiming to raise the diversity of girls’ voices
and their vision for a reimagined future.
Twenty-five years ago, some 30,000 women and men from nearly 200 countries arrived in Beijing, China,
for the Fourth World Conference on Women, determined to recognize women’s rights as human rights.
The conference culminated in the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action: the
most comprehensive policy agenda for gender equality.
The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action is the most progressive blueprint ever for advancing
the rights of not only women but girls. Now, nearly 25 years later, the Platform for Action remains
a powerful foundation for assessing progress on gender equality. It calls for a world where every girl
and woman can realize all her rights, such as to live free from violence, to attend and complete school, to choose
when and whom she marries, and to earn equal pay for equal work.
The Platform for Action specifically calls on the global community to:
- Eliminate all forms of discrimination against girls.
- Eliminate negative cultural attitudes and practices against girls.
- Promote and protect the rights of girls and increase awareness of their needs and potential.
- Eliminate discrimination against girls in education, skills development and training.
- Eliminate discrimination against girls in health and nutrition.
- Eliminate the economic exploitation of child labor and protect young girls at work.
- Eradicate violence against girls.
- Promote girls’ awareness of and participation in social, economic and political life.
- Strengthen the role of the family in improving the status of girls.
The International Day of the Girl 2023 is not a one day event but should be a guide to value our girls, invest in them and empower our girls to use their voices for an equal future. Our girls need us to get involved starting at home. The Unicef website has many resources to help you get the conversation started and going for generations to come.
