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As the world marks the International Women's Day on Tuesday, the United Nations has sent a clear message that the global community need to step up efforts to support conflict-affected women and girls as many of them have been facing severe challenges and rooted inequalities.
The women and girls who are most likely to be left behind are often in fragile and conflict-affected states, said Yannick Glemarec, UN Women deputy executive director in an interview with Xinhua.
According to Glemarec, more than half of the children that do not go to school are in conflict-affected states; women in those fragile countries are more than two and a half times more likely to die in the process of giving life.
And war-torn countries like Syria have witnessed an increase in child marriage rate, he added.
On Tuesday, the UN Children's Fund and the UN Population Fund announced a new initiative to advance efforts to prevent girls from marrying too young and to support girls already married in 12 countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, where child marriage rates are high.
The initiative will focus on proven strategies, including increasing girls' access to education and health care services, educating parents and communities on the dangers of child marriage, increasing economic support to families, and strengthening and enforcing laws that establish 18 as the minimum age of marriage.
Apart from these, women and girls have been faced with much more severe security problems nowadays either in conflict-affected states or on their way of exile to other countries.
The non-governmental organization Amnesty International pointed out in its new research that women and girl refugees traveling from Syria and Iraq face violence, assault, exploitation and sexual harassment, and governments as well as aid agencies are failing to provide even basic protections to them.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his message on the day that women's bodies are used as battlefields in wars, and girls are attacked on their way to school, referring to cases like Boko Haram's kidnapping of more than 200 school girls in 2014.
To tackle these challenges, UN officials have urged the implementation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda which include a specific goal that aims to end discrimination and violence against women and girls and ensure equal participation in all spheres of life.
"We need to move beyond action from experts, governments or the UN in the traditional sectors," said Mogens Lykketoft, president of the 70th session of the General Assembly, in a statement on the day.
"We need to engage actors across all of society -- civil society, academia, the media, the private sector, financial institutions and others who have a major impact on the lives of women and girls," he added.
In this regard, the UN Women, the UN arm dedicated to women empowerment, launched this morning a new initiative -- HeForShe Arts Week-- to promote gender equality and women's rights via arts together with British movie star and UN Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson.
According to UN Women, the innitiative is seeking to influence people's logic and value through arts like films, books as well as performances, and meanwhile to engage men and boys to take actions to end discrimination and violence against women and girls. Enditem
