The Girl Child

A/RES/66/140View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 65a Promotion and protection of the rights of children, published in 2012.

What other versions does this mandate have?

19 versions · 1996–2023

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

Year	Symbol	Title	Word length	Text similarity
2023	A/RES/78/188	The girl child	7,836	95%Compare
2022	A/RES/76/146	The girl child	7,603	75%Compare
2020	A/RES/74/134	The girl child	5,818	100%Compare
2018	A/RES/72/154	The girl child	5,815	74%Compare
2016	A/RES/70/138	The girl child	5,428	56%Compare

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

10 reports · 2007–2025

Year	Symbol	Title	Mandate resolution
2025	A/80/273	The girl child and the impacts of digital and emerging technologies report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/78/188
2023	A/78/284	Impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on girls and the recovery from it report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/76/146
2021	A/76/204	Well-being and empowerment of girls living in rural areas report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/74/134
2019	A/74/246	The girl child report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/72/154
2017	A/72/218	The girl child report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/70/138

What’s in this document?

50 operative paragraphs

Stresses the need for full and urgent implementation of the rights of the girl child as provided to her under human rights instruments, and urges States to consider signing and ratifying or acceding to the Convention on the Rights of the Child,Error: Reference source not found the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women,Error: Reference source not found the Convention on the Rights of Persons with DisabilitiesError: Reference source not found and the Optional Protocols theretoError: Reference source not found as a matter of priority;

Urges all States that have not yet signed and ratified or acceded to the Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138)¹⁹ and the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182),²⁰ of the International Labour Organization to consider doing so;

¹⁹United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 1015, No. 14862.

²⁰Ibid., vol. 2133, No. 37245.

Urges all Governments and the United Nations system to strengthen efforts bilaterally and with international organizations and private sector donors in order to achieve the goals of the World Education Forum,²¹ in particular that of eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, which have not been fully met, and to implement the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative as a means of reaching this goal, and calls for the implementation of and reaffirms the commitments contained in the Education for All goals and the Millennium Development Goals, particularly those related to gender and education;

²¹See United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Final Report of the World Education Forum, Dakar, Senegal, 26–28 April 2000 (Paris, 2000).

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, to promote access to skills and entrepreneurial training for young women and to tackle male and female stereotypes in order to ensure that young women entering the labour market have opportunities to obtain full and productive employment and decent work;

Encourages States to promote the development of gender-sensitive curricula for educational programmes at all levels and to take concrete measures to ensure that educational materials portray women and men, youth, girls and boys in positive and non-stereotypic roles, particularly in the teaching of scientific and technological subjects, in order to address the root causes of segregation in working life;

Calls upon States and the international community 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, and ensuring that all children have access to education of good quality, as well as making secondary education generally available and accessible to all, in particular through the progressive introduction of free education, bearing in mind that special measures to ensure equal access, including affirmative action, contribute to achieving equal opportunity and combating exclusion, and ensuring school attendance, in particular for girls and children from low-income families;

Calls upon States, with the support of international organizations, civil society and non-governmental organizations, as appropriate, to develop policies and programmes, giving priority to formal and informal education programmes, including age-appropriate sex education, with appropriate direction and guidance from parents and legal guardians, that support girls and enable them to acquire knowledge, develop self-esteem and take responsibility for their own lives, and to place special focus on programmes to educate women and men, especially parents, about the importance of girls’ physical and mental health and well-being, including the elimination of discrimination against girls in child and forced marriages;

Calls upon all States and international and non-governmental organizations, individually and collectively, to implement further the Beijing Platform for Action,Error: Reference source not found in particular the strategic objectives relating to the girl child, and the further actions and initiatives to implement the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action,²² and to mobilize all necessary resources and support in order to achieve the goals and strategic objectives and actions set out in the Beijing DeclarationError: Reference source not found and Platform for Action;

²²Resolution S-23/3, annex.

Calls upon all States 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, where appropriate, including the strengthening of national mechanisms to implement 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, as indicated in the further actions and initiatives;

Urges States to strengthen efforts to urgently eradicate all forms of discrimination against women and girls and, where applicable, to remain dedicated to the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Optional Protocol thereto;²³

²³United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 2131, No. 20378.

Also urges States to fulfil the pledges that they made at the Fourth World Conference on Women and at the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly to modify or abolish remaining laws that discriminate against women and girls;

Further urges States to improve the situation of girl children living in poverty, deprived of nutrition, water and sanitation facilities, with limited or no access to basic physical and mental health-care services, shelter, education, participation and protection, taking into account that, while a severe lack of goods and services hurts every human being, it is most threatening and harmful to the girl child, leaving her unable to enjoy her rights, to reach her full potential and to participate as a full member of society;

Urges States to ensure that the applicable requirements of the International Labour Organization for 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 payment and remuneration, are protected from economic 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 vocational training, and also urges States to develop gender-sensitive measures, including national action plans, where appropriate, to eliminate the worst forms of child labour, including commercial sexual exploitation, slavery-like practices, forced and bonded labour, trafficking and hazardous forms of child labour;

Recognizes the importance of strengthening health systems, in particular primary health care and the need to integrate the HIV response into it, and notes that weak health systems, which already face many challenges, including a lack of trained health workers and insufficient retention of skilled health workers, are among the biggest barriers to accessing health care;

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 all measures necessary to ensure the right of girls to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health, including sexual and reproductive health, and to develop sustainable health systems and social services;

Urges all States to promote gender equality and equal access to basic social services, such as education, nutrition, birth registration, health care, including sexual and reproductive health, vaccinations and protection from diseases representing the major causes of mortality, including non-communicable diseases, and to mainstream a gender perspective in all development policies and programmes, including those relating to children as well as those specific to the girl child;

Calls upon States, with the support of international organizations and civil society, including non-governmental organizations, and the media, to take appropriate measures to address the root factors of child and forced marriages, including by undertaking educational activities to raise awareness regarding the negative aspects of such practices;

Urges all States to enact and strictly enforce laws to ensure that marriage is entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses, and, in addition, to enact and strictly enforce laws concerning the minimum legal age of consent and the minimum age for marriage and raise the minimum age for marriage where necessary, and to develop and implement comprehensive policies, plans of action and programmes for 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 ensure that efforts to enact and implement legislation to end child and forced marriages engage all stakeholders and agents of change and ensure that the information on the legislation against the practice is well known and generates social support for the enforcement of such laws and legislation;

Calls upon States to support community workshops and discussion sessions to enable communities to collectively explore ways to prevent and address child and forced marriages, provide information through stakeholders who are credible to the community, such as medical personnel and local, community and religious leaders, regarding the harm associated with these marriages, give greater voice to girls and ensure consistence of message throughout the entire community, and encourage the much-needed strong engagement of men and boys;

Also calls upon States to support and implement, including with dedicated resources, multisectoral policies and programmes that end the practice of child and forced marriages and ensure the provision of viable alternatives and institutional support, especially educational opportunities for girls, with an emphasis on keeping girls in school through post-primary education, including those who are already married or pregnant, ensuring physical access to education, including by establishing safe residential facilities, increasing financial incentives to families, promoting the empowerment of girls, improving educational quality and ensuring safe and hygienic conditions in schools;

Further calls upon States to strengthen research, data collection and analysis on the girl child, disaggregated by sex, age and geographical location, in order to provide a better understanding of the situations of girls, especially of the multiple forms of discrimination that they face, and to develop necessary policies and programme responses, which should take a holistic approach to addressing the full range of the forms of discrimination that girls may face, in order to protect 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 and exploitation, including female infanticide and prenatal sex selection, female genital mutilation, rape, domestic violence, incest, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, child prostitution and child pornography, trafficking and forced migration, forced labour and forced marriage, as well as marriage under legal age, 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 complement punitive measures with educational activities designed to promote a process of consensus towards the abandonment of harmful practices such as female genital mutilation and to provide appropriate services for those affected by the practices;

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

Urges States to formulate comprehensive, multidisciplinary and coordinated national plans, programmes or strategies to eliminate all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls, which should be widely disseminated and should provide targets and timetables for implementation, as well as effective domestic enforcement procedures through the establishment of monitoring 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 the right of children to express themselves and to participate in all matters affecting them, in accordance with their age and maturity, is fully and equally enjoyed by girls;

Further urges States to involve girls, including girls with special needs, and their representative organizations, in decision-making processes, as appropriate, and to include them as full and active partners in identifying their own needs and in developing, planning, implementing and assessing policies and programmes to meet those needs;

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 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 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 enrolment in school and access to shelter, good nutrition and health and social services on an equal basis with other children;

Encourages States to promote actions, including through bilateral and multilateral technical cooperation and financial assistance, for the social reintegration of children in difficult situations, in particular girls, considering, inter alia, views, skills and capacities that those children have developed in the conditions in which they lived and, where appropriate, with their meaningful participation;

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, as well as in other humanitarian emergencies, and further urges States to take special measures for the protection of girls, in particular to protect them from sexually transmitted infections, including HIV infection, gender-based violence, including rape, sexual abuse and sexual exploitation, torture, abduction and forced labour, paying special attention to refugee and displaced girls, and to take into account their special needs in the delivery of humanitarian assistance and disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation assistance and reintegration processes;

Deplores all cases of sexual exploitation and abuse of women and children, especially girls, in humanitarian crises, including those cases involving humanitarian workers and peacekeepers, and urges States to take effective measures to address gender-based violence in humanitarian emergencies and to make all possible efforts to ensure that their laws and institutions are adequate to prevent, promptly investigate and prosecute acts of gender-based violence;

Also deplores all acts of sexual exploitation, abuse of and trafficking in women and children by military, police and civilian personnel involved in United Nations operations, 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 and personnel-contributing countries to continue to take all appropriate action necessary to combat these abuses 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;²⁴

²⁴See Official Records of the General Assembly, Fifty-ninth Session, Supplement No. 19 (A/59/19/Rev.1).

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 Persons²⁵ and the activities outlined therein, and expresses its view that it will, inter alia, contribute to the promotion of the rights of the girls and enhance cooperation and a better coordination of efforts in fighting trafficking in persons and promote increased ratification and full implementation of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime²⁶ and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime;²⁷

²⁵Resolution 64/293.

²⁶United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 2225, No. 39574.

²⁷Ibid., vol. 2237, No. 39574.

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;

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 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 Development Assistance 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, living with or affected by HIV, including pregnant girls and young and adolescent mothers and girls with disabilities, with a view to achieving Millennium Development Goal 6, in particular to halt and begin to reverse by 2015 the spread of HIV;

Invites States to promote initiatives aimed at reducing the prices of antiretroviral drugs, especially second-line drugs, available to the girl child, including 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 preferences, for an active and healthy life, as part of a comprehensive response to HIV and AIDS, other communicable diseases and non-communicable diseases;

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 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;

Stresses the need to strengthen the commitment of States and the United Nations system in their responsibility to mainstream the promotion and protection of the rights of the child, in particular the girl child, in the development agenda at the national, regional and international levels;

Urges States, the international community, the relevant United Nations entities, civil society and international financial institutions to continue to actively support, through the allocation of increased human and financial resources, targeted innovative programmes that address ending female genital mutilation and developing and providing education programmes, such as the United Nations Population Fund-United Nations Children’s Fund joint programme on accelerating the abandonment of female genital mutilation, and sensitization workshops on the dire consequences of this harmful practice for the health of the girl, and to provide training programmes for those who perform the harmful procedure so that they may adopt an alternative profession;

Stresses that a common coordinated approach that promotes positive social change at the community, national and international levels could lead to the abandonment of female genital mutilation within a generation, with some of the main achievements being obtained by 2015, in line with the Millennium Development Goals;

Urges States, the international community, the relevant United Nations entities, civil society and the international financial institutions to actively support, through the allocation of increased human and financial resources, efforts to end child and forced marriages;

Calls upon States to strengthen the capacity of national health systems, and in this regard calls upon the international community to assist national efforts, including by allocation of adequate resources in order to provide 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;

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 for poverty eradication at the global, regional and country levels, recognizing that strengthened availability and effective allocation of resources are required at all levels, in order to ensure that all the internationally agreed development and poverty eradication goals, including those set out in the United Nations Millennium Declaration,²⁸ are realized within their time framework, and reaffirming that investment in children, particularly girls, and the realization of their rights are among the most effective ways to eradicate poverty;

²⁸See resolution 55/2.

Requests the Secretary-General to submit a report to the General Assembly at its sixty-eighth session on the implementation of the present resolution, including an emphasis on child-headed households: causes, effects and prospects, 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.

The Girl Child

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

What other versions does this mandate have?

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

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