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South Sudan, Chad and Eritrea are the worst African countries to live in as a girl, according to a unique index of its kind found on Friday, and researchers warned that the pandemic could delay efforts to keep girls in school, out of work. and without employment. safe from violence.
The African Child Policy Forum (ACPF) ranked 52 African nations on the rights and well-being of girls. The research institute judged governments on various factors, including health care, education, and laws and policies that protect girls.
Mauritius, Tunisia, South Africa, Seychelles and Algeria topped the inaugural “Girl Friendship Index,” but an ACPF report said the rankings were determined more by political commitment and responsibility than by economic wealth.
The ACPF said African governments had generally made some progress on girls’ rights, but that most countries were failing, citing problems ranging from malnutrition to early marriage.
The United Nations says that 23% of girls on the continent are not in primary school against 19% of boys. Nearly four in 10 girls marry before they turn 18, according to the World Bank.
“Girls across the continent continue to wake up to the daily reality of injustice,” said Joan Nyanyuki, executive director of the ACPF, in a statement. “An entire generation of girls and young women is being failed.”
By 2050, Africa will be home to around 500 million girls under the age of 18, according to the ACPF, which said failure to invest in young women would result in huge economic losses.
However, regional African and international laws on human and children’s rights largely ignore the problems of girls, according to the report.
Advocates said mental health was a growing concern among girls in Africa, who are more likely than boys to attempt suicide, driven by factors such as violence and domestic work.
The coronavirus pandemic has left girls on the continent more vulnerable to child labor, human trafficking, lack of medical care and school dropouts, advocates said.
“We were slowly coming out of this systemic subordination of girls … COVID-19 completely reversed that,” said Zemdena Abebe, advisor to the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA), a network of organizations from the civil society. .
“All of us as a society are going to suffer the consequences of this relapse when it comes to gender equality,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger and the Central African Republic were other countries with poor results in the index, with Cape Verde, Namibia and Egypt among the highest ranked countries.
