International Day of the Girl Child 2021; Importance and History

International Day of the Girl Child is internationally observed and celebrated on 11 October with different themes and this year theme is chosen as "Digital Generation, Our generation".

The theme will direct all those problems that girls need to face in society being a girl child. This day has great importance as it expresses and makes people aware of the value of a girl adolescent child and also tries to open ways for them by establishing and recognizing their strength and capabilities. All around the world people celebrate the occasion by giving attention to the opinions and voices of adolescent's girls with the aim to louder their voices and empowering their views. On this day, in different regions in the entire globe people makes conversation to bring out the issues associated with the children that are adolescent girls. And as a result, some of the common issues and challenges are raised which are the main cause of problems in the life of an adolescent girl child, those challenges are; discrimination as a girl, facing violence, can't learn because of poor learning opportunities, child marriage at a very small age. The day is observed to fulfil human rights and mainly aims at the need to address all those challenges and obstacles faced by girls in their life.

The theme of International Day of the Girl Child 2021 is "Digital Generation, Our generation" as the global pandemic COVID-19 has led to the increased use of mobile and laptops to fulfil the requirement of education and earning money but even today approximately 2.2 billion people in the world do not have access to the internet. So this has made the people primarily the girls to come out of their limits and therefore the gender gap regarding the use of the internet has expanded from 11% in 2013 to 17% in 2019 and 43% in the least developed countries.

It signifies that girls shouldn't be left behind in the current scenario of the digital world with increased technologies in getting employed and being educated with new knowledge and skills. 11 October as the International Day of the Girl Child is declared by the United Nations General Assembly in the year 2011 on 19 December through a resolution. In one of the conferences called the Beijing Declaration held in Beijing in the year 1995, for the first time the rights of girl children are brought into focus. It was a World Conference on Women which is well-known as the ever progressive and developed blueprint that aims in the growth of women including girls.

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