We welcome the prime minister’s attendance at the Girl Summit being co-hosted by UNICEF in London.
The event aims to mobilise international efforts to, among other things, end child and forced marriage and eliminate female genital mutilation around the world within a generation.
By focusing on those practices which most harm girls and young women, and thereby hold back the next generation, the summit highlights the need to tackle all types of gender discrimination and violence.
It is very important for Bangladesh that regardless of the outcome of this summit, our government takes more effective action to address these issues.
The country’s progress in reducing the most extreme forms of poverty and in improving performance against social indicators, has been helped by moves to improve basic education and increase women’s participation in the workforce.
Despite this, Bangladesh is still far away from eliminating gender discrimination and ensuring free exercise of rights by all women.
The aims of anti-discrimination initiatives are for instance held back by social attitudes which undervalue education by girls and encourage child marriage According to UNICEF, while the rate has declined substantially in recent years, 17% or nearly one in five of all girls are still getting married under the age of 15, giving Bangladesh one of the highest rates of underage marriage in the world.
We need the government to do much more to eliminate such abuses and to empower women and girls so that everybody is assured of their right to reach their full potential.