Emily Musil

Girls' Education as Human Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa
By Emily Musil, Ph.D. Candidate in African History, UCLA

While debate rages in the United States about whether boys are short-changed by too much literature and not enough recess in school, the vast majority of the world has a different educational concern: girls who do not have the opportunity to get an education at all. The latest statistics from UNESCO indicate that there are approximately 862 million illiterate adults in the world, two-thirds of whom are women. According to former Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, “[T]here is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women.” Indeed, girls’ education is not only a philosophical human right; it is an essential element to social and political advancement for all people.

According to a recent report by Human Rights Watch, “Failing Our Children: Barriers to the Right to Education,” an estimated forty million boys and sixty million girls worldwide do not attend school. The primary reasons include high school fees, violence in the community, child labor, and discrimination based on race, religion, or other status. Eighty percent of children who do not attend school live in sub-Saharan Africa or Southern Asia. In families that cannot afford to send all their children to school, sons are overwhelmingly given preference, while girls’ education is seen as less necessary or useful. Moreover, girls are more likely to have to do extensive domestic labor, care for ailing relatives, or be subjected to child marriage. Boys who do not go to school certainly face heavy consequences, including an increased risk of living in extreme poverty and being recruited into forced labor or militias. For girls, however, the stakes are even higher. Even when they are able to get to school, they face far greater vulnerability to sexual violence. A recent medical study from South Africa discovered that close to 40 percent of rape victims who identified their perpetrator reported that it was a teacher or principal who had raped them. Denying girls’ access to education and a safe environment impedes not only their individual future, but the economic and public health opportunities for their communities.

	Students in Cote d'Ivoire

Women’s Education and Economic Development

Study after study reinforces the fact that educating girls and women not only empowers the women themselves, but also provides critical tools for the infrastructure of any society. The extreme poverty that is exacerbated by the lack of quality education contributes to vast public health risks, environmental damage, and political instability that threaten the entire planet. Female education can promote smaller and healthier families, lowered rates of HIV/AIDS infection, more educated children, and less labor and sexual exploitation. Improvement is attainable; small structural changes can make significant differences. A recent New York Times article outlined how something as simple as a toilet for girls can make the difference in their attendance rates in school (LaFraniere 2005). More significant changes include initiatives and funding for teacher training, textbooks, and scholarships, and international support such as UNICEF’s “acceleration campaign.” Groups such as Tostan, an NGO based in Senegal and operating in numerous countries in sub-Saharan Africa, work with communities in local languages to allow residents to determine other changes that can have a significant impact on the lives of women and families in their specific community.   

While this article focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, gender disparity is not relegated to developing countries. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2006 “Global Gender Gap,” women throughout the world still have significantly lowered economic options, political power, and educational opportunities. Worldwide, women only occupy 17 percent of parliamentary seats in government. While women in the United States may have become the majority of undergraduate students, women continue to be vastly underrepresented in positions of economic and political power. In fact, the United States falls below the international levels of women in government, with women comprising only 15 percent of the Congress. Rwanda, on the other hand, is the closest to gender parity in parliamentary representation with women accounting for 49 percent of representatives.

The Promise of Human Rights

After the devastation of World War II, the international community came together to found the United Nations in an attempt to establish a more peaceful and just world. This international body concluded that central to the promotion of humanity was an established set of norms for human rights. In 1948 the Declaration of Universal Human Rights was adopted, in the words of its preamble, to be a “common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.” Article 26 states that “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Education shall be compulsory.” By failing millions of girls, we are failing our accepted standards of human rights.

UNICEF’s focused campaign “25 by 2005” identified the top 25 countries in critical need of sustainable development efforts. The criteria for selecting these countries included low enrollment rates for girls, gender gaps of more than 10 percent in primary education, countries that had more than 1 million girls out of school, and countries that had particular challenges for education, such as armed conflict. Of the 25 countries with a severe crisis in girls’ education that the United Nations deemed a hindrance to overall development, 14 were in sub-Saharan Africa.

There is no question that inequalities at all levels should be addressed by policy-makers, and there are certainly boys in the United States—particularly those from low-income families—who deserve more attention and mentoring in schools. But as a global community, it is critical that we address the gross educational inequalities that exist, particularly for girls.

Oprah Winfrey received nearly as much criticism as media coverage for the recent opening of her “Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls” in South Africa. Some claimed she spent too much on luxury surroundings for the girls, while others questioned why she wouldn’t start a school in her home country first. But I believe Ms. Winfrey understands that empowering African girls does much more than support the basic right to education promised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; it invests in the global health, political stability, and human rights of all of us living in this interconnected world.

References

"Failing Our Children: Barriers to the Right to Education,” Human Rights Watch, September 2005. hrw.org/reports/2005/education0905/

LaFraniere, Sharon, “Another School Barrier for African Girls: No Toilet” New York Times, December 23, 2005.

"The Millennium Development Goals Report,” United Nations, December 2005. unstats.un.org/unsd/mi/pdf/MDG%20Book.pdf

"The State of the World’s Children 2007. Women and Children: The Double Dividend of Gender Equality.,” The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 2006. www.unicef.org/sowc07/

“Tostan Annual Report 2006” Tostan: Women’s Health and Human Rights.  http://www.tostan.org/2006_annual_report.pdf

Tounkara, Keur Omar.  “West Africa: Maintaining the Right to Youth, Education,”  http://allafrica.com/stories/200703070904.html