By Razak Baba
11th October is being celebrated as International Day of the Girl. It is a day that the global community celebrates the rights of the girl to education and highlighting the need to eliminate all forms of discrimination against girls.
This year’s celebration is intended to educate, create awareness on issues of concern, to mobilize political will and resources to address digital problems. This celebration is reinforcing achievements of humanity as the digital relevance of the girl child to know their digital realities and the solutions they need to excel on their diverse pathways so that this generation of girls can become a generation of technologists. This Digital celebration will showcase through advocacy messages to let the stakeholders understand the enhanced digital literacy as a driver of economic growth, a competitive business and national advantage as well as a weapon for fighting human rights especially for girls’ rights and empowerment in today’s generation and for the future.
In a joint statement to mark the day, 3 Child Rights Organizations, Defense For Children International, Rights And Responsibilities Initiatives Ghana and Erudite Women Empowerment Foundation, have called on all stakeholders responsible for the effective development of girls to provide girls in their quest to be knowledgeable in the digital community, appropriate ICT resources to enable them to fit into the digital world. The resources they will need include time, space, funds, phones, computers, and trainers to become digital knowledgeable, as every aspect of life has become digital. They said girls need digital competence for peak performance wherever they find themselves.
“To be assertive they need to communicate through advocacy, campaigns, and self-definition. To excel in school, they need to have the capacity to access supporting theory and best practices in their chosen field of work and interest. At home they need it to improve their wellbeing and that of their family and friends”, the Group stated.
The groups said as much as they appreciate the efforts of digitizing the economy to date in respect of remittances to families from abroad, facilitating communication, used of virtual education and improvement in social media handlings, Government and all relevant stakeholders should make digitalization a priority and plan adequately to respond to the Gender selective plans and budget to ensure that, teaching and training at all fields are digital-compliance as well as affording all especially teachers to be computer literate to translate effective and enhanced knowledge to the children.
They also called on the National cyber security parameters to intensify their operations at all levels since in the wake of COVID 19, as many children are at risk of their basic rights being undermined due to the exposure to social exploitation and use of violence.
According to the groups, children need to be educated to adopt smart techniques on safety protocol online including but not limited to giving out personal information like house address, phone numbers, avoid meeting people in the middle of the night and not accepting files, as well as all friendly requests and messages.
