NEW YORK, 3. March: A 16-year-old Nepalese girl burst into tears describing her work in a match (tændstik) factory to help support her mother. A Jordanian teen spoke out about violence against girls in rural areas. A former child soldier from DR Congo cried when she recalled her suffering as a sex slave.
The three are among more than 200 young people attending a high-level meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, which this year is focusing on discrimination and violence against girls.
They spoke at a panel and a news conference about issues that concern them, ranging from rape, trafficking and prostitution to education, child labor and AIDS.
– The most important message is that governments should ensure that every working child gets a free education, said Sunita Tamang, lamenting that in her community in Nepal “people think that if you educate a girl child, it will only embarrass you.”
There was a time, she said tearfully, when she could not go to school because she had to work to help her mother, a single parent. But now, through a program supported by the UN childrens agency, UNICEF, she attends classes in the morning and works in the factory making boxes for matches in the afternoon.
In her spare time, Tamang started a club with other working children to campaign for education for youngsters who have to work and for an end to violence against children.
– What is unachievable if given an opportunity? she asked at the crowded panel session, adding: – Look at me. I work in a match factory and today I have been able to come here and share my feelings and experiences with you all.
Golfidan Khader Al Abassy, 18, of Jordan, described the discrimination against girls in families, schools and in the workplace in her country and the shortage of programs that focus on girls participation.
– I hope it will be in the near future that we will have the same opportunities as boys, she said.
– The most important message which I want to send for all over the world … (is) that the girls have a lot of power … so if we give them the chance to prove themselves, they will be great persons. … We have to believe in them, she added.
Madeleine – whose last name was withheld for security reasons – was recruited at age 11 into the Mai-Mai militia, a ragtag group of impoverished fighters with varying loyalties who operate across huge swaths of eastern DR Congo. She spent two years with the militia, fighting on the front lines, and was demobilized in 2004.
At Fridays panel, she urged the international community to bring those responsible for crimes against girl soldiers in DR Congo to justice.
– We regret we were forgotten by those who should help us in doing justice to us, especially regarding the unusual sexual exploitation that we endured, which was merely sexual slavery, the 15-year-old said.
– We regret the International Criminal Court has not so far taken into account this aspect which would help ease our pain, she said.
So far only one Congolese warlord has been ordered to stand trial before the war crimes tribunal on a charge of sending children into battle.
Kilde: The Push Journal
