International Day of Girl (11 October)

The world’s 1.1 billion girls are part of a large
and vibrant global generation poised to take on
the future. Yet the ambition for gender equality
in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)


highlights the preponderance of disadvantage
and discrimination borne by girls everywhere on
a daily basis. Only through explicit focus on
collecting and analyzing girl-focused, girl-
relevant and sex-disaggregated data, and using
these data to inform key policy and program


decisions, can we adequately measure and
understand the opportunities and challenges
girls face, and identify and track progress
towards solutions to their most pressing
problems.


With this in mind, the theme for this year's
International Day of the Girl (11 October) is
Girls' Progress = Goals' Progress: What Counts
for Girls . While we can applaud the ambition
and potential of the SDGs for girls, and
recognize how girls’ progress is good not only
for girls, but also for families, communities and
society at large,

we must also take this
opportunity to consider how existing gaps in
data on girls and young women, lack of
systematic analysis, and limited use of existing
data significantly limit our ability to monitor
and communicate the wellbeing and progress
of half of humanity.


Much more can and needs to be done to
harness the data required to ensure programs,
policies and services effectively respond to the
specific needs of girls. When we invest in girls’
health, safety, education and rights - in times of
peace and crisis - we empower them to reach
for their dreams and build better lives for
themselves and their communities.

Only when
investments in programs for girls on issues that
particularly affect them - due to both their age
and gender - are complemented with
corresponding investments in data on girls, can
we make real progress towards greater
accountability in domains of critical importance
to them.