Because I am a Girl: Urban and Digital Frontiers - Plan International

Setting the scene
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Jane Hahn
The report series
‘Because I am Girl’ is an annual report
published by Plan assessing the state of the
world’s girls. While women and children are
recognised as specific categories in policy and
planning, girls’ particular needs and rights
are often ignored. These reports provide
concrete evidence, including the voices of girls
themselves, as to why they need to be treated
differently from boys and older women.
The reports also make recommendations for
action, showing policymakers and planners
what can make a real difference to girls’ lives
all over the world.
The first report was published in 2007
and the last will be in 2015, the final target
year for the United Nations Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs). For the same
period, in our ‘Real Choices, Real Lives’
study, we are also following a cohort group
of girls in nine different countries born in the
year of our first report. This year, as the UN
General Assembly reviews progress on the
goals, we will be measuring the progress of
our cohort group and their families against
several of the MDG targets which are under
review. Does the state of these young
girls’ lives indicate that the international
community will reach its aims or not?
In 2008, we looked at the situation of
girls affected by conflict; those growing up
‘In the Shadow of War’. The 2009 report
focused on economic empowerment: ‘Girls
in the Global Economy: Adding it all Up.’ This
year, we look at adolescent girls in two of
the most dynamic arenas in the world today
– cities and new technologies – and examine
the opportunities and the dangers that these
present.
“The government don’t do anything for girls
on the street, they don’t even think about
them. They should take them by the hand
and say ‘I am going to support you, I am
going to help you, you are not alone’, but no
– they look at them as they would any other
rubbish.”
Jessica, 17, street girl from Nicaragua 1
“Literacy now is not just learning to
read and write but learning how to use
a computer.”
Rana, 16, Alexandria, Egypt 2
New arenas for adolescent girls: cities
and new technologies
Today, five years before the 2015 target
for the Millennium Development Goals,
many millions of girls are still missing out on
education, on healthcare, and on prospects
for employment.
This year, we have chosen to look at two
global arenas of dramatic change – the
world’s cities, which are expanding every
hour, and the global spaces opened up by
information and communications technology,
where the pace of change is even faster.
In both these areas, adolescent girls face
bewildering and often conflicting sets of
choices as they go about their lives: choices
that will affect their own futures, but also
the future of the world.
Using case studies, girls’ voices, expert
opinion and original research, the report
highlights the positive and negative aspects
of these fast-changing spaces and places.
It also looks at what adolescent girls need
in order to thrive in them, and makes
recommendations to those in authority at
international, national and local levels.
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