This blog was previously published on ONE.

Ashlegh Pfunye and Iyunoluwa Ademola-Popoola are Youth Leaders for Global Partnership for Education. They raise awareness of the barriers to education and aim to increase the ambition of leaders for financing education and development.

It is undeniable that COVID has altered how we live and work. Lives continue to be lost, and hospitals and health workers have been overwhelmed with patients suffering from the virus. Though efforts such as social distancing, wearing of masks, and bans on large gatherings have been implemented to curb the spread of the pandemic, specific measures need to be taken to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on girls.

Girls are more vulnerable

Girls’ education has been specifically challenged by the pandemic, especially for girls from low-income households and girls in rural areas. Girls have faced threats including increases in child marriage, teenage or early pregnancy, and gender-based violence. Many girls were married off in exchange for money as a result of the economic effects of the pandemic on families.

The increase in child marriage resulted in an increase in teenage or early pregnancy. There was also an increase in rape cases, which led to unwanted pregnancy, and survivors are more likely to drop out of school. We have seen the impact of these in our communities.

For example, Cecilia, a 17-year-old girl from Tavengerwa village in Gokwe South in Zimbabwe, lived with her father and was in grade 1 when the pandemic broke out. As a result of the economic pressure of COVID, she was married off to an elderly man, who already has a wife and two children, as his second wife.

The community facilitator from her village shared that due to school closures many girls are more vulnerable to these situations. Cecilia’s friend and neighbor also got married within a few months of Cecilia’s wedding.

Sexual and reproductive rights are highly compromised in this lockdown as girls are unable to leave home to seek safety from their abusers.

It has been reported by UNESCO’s COVID-19 Global Education Coalition that teenage pregnancy across sub-Saharan Africa could increase by as much as 65% as a result of school closures because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In my community, I have seen that girls who have children as teenagers have had to give up their education in order to take care of their children, while some are forcefully sent out of school. Many of these girls then try to learn a trade or become petty traders.

Increased dropout rates

The education emergency caused by the COVID pandemic could also roll back progress that has been made to achieve gender equality in education. It has been reported that there will be a sharp increase in the number of girls who would not be able to return to school after the pandemic.

Prior to the pandemic, 15 million girls were out of school in East Asia and the Pacific. The Malala Fund found that due to COVID-19, more than 20 million girls (from pre-primary to upper secondary) are at risk of dropping out and may never return to school.

Building back better

Access to technology is essential for girls. The 21^st century economy needs individuals to be technology literate. Girls have largely been missing out, it is important to equip them with knowledge and skills to efficiently and effectively use technology to advance their interests and ambitions.

There are deeper structural challenges that the world needs to deal with such as child marriage, sexual and reproductive health rights of girls. Post-COVID-19 there might be a rise in child marriages due to the economic hardships that families have been exposed to during the lockdowns and the paradigm shift of working conditions.

Rebecca Solnit in her book Hope in the Dark says that “To hope is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable”.

This is what drives the future we want for girls. With all the challenges confronted, with all the hardships faced throughout decades our hope in girls is not lost and we believe that a new world is possible.

It is true that the future is uncertain. Thus, hope calls for us to act, it forces us to take steps towards the imagined future. This is a generational call to ensure that we set a legacy of creating a society that values all people equal regardless of gender, tribe, and race.

The future of the girl child lies in the decisions and actions we take today.

Sign our petition and tell governments to invest in every child’s future.