Writing for the Parliament.com on Human Rights Day 2010, Véronique Mathieu warns that EU aid policy is having little, or no, impact in protecting the human rights of the developing world's 600 million girls and adolescent women.
 

At the age of nine Arwa should have been playing with her friends at her home in Jibla, Yemen. Not fighting for a divorce from the man she was forced to marry. In 2008 the world heard her cry, but she and millions of girls in the same situation have been largely silent ever since.

Like Arwa, one seventh of girls under the age of 15 in the developing world are forced into marriages they do not want to be part of. Denied control over their life, liberty, and destiny, girls forced into marriage as children are living in a form of modern-day slavery.

In Kibera, Nairobi, around a million people live in a slum that is not much larger than the Bois de la Cambre park on the outskirts of Brussels. People do not live long here, as life expectancy has been crippled by HIV/Aids and tuberculosis. Most of the population is under twenty, and half of the inhabitants are HIV positive.

Hardly anyone has the means to make any money, and for many women the only way to make ends meet is to sell their bodies. More than eight out of every 10 HIV positive inhabitants in Kibera are women.

On human rights day this year, it's time to hear the voices of the hundreds of millions of vulnerable young girls around the world who are trapped in similar situations to Arwa and the hundreds of thousands of girls of Kibera. Around the world women and girls are suffering the worst consequences of poverty, and yet they are receiving less than two cents in every euro spent on development.

It's time to make sure they receive their fair share of development aid. If we continue to neglect this vulnerable section of the population we will implicitly be allowing poverty to continue.

In the developing world there are over 600 million girls between the ages of 12 and 24, or roughly half the population of China. They are central in enabling societies to develop and in nurturing their growth, but too many of them are being deprived of their childhood, an education and their human rights.

Young girls in the developing world are more than twice as likely as boys to be deprived of schooling, and over a quarter of all girls in the developing world are not in school.

Deprived of protective structures like their parents, school or peer groups, girls lose all control of their own future as they fall victim to powerful external forces. In doing so they are likely to face the menaces of early pregnancy as well as HIV/Aids.

Each year 14 million girls between the ages of 15 and 19 give birth, and for girls of this age the leading cause of death is medical complications caused by pregnancy. Furthermore, 75 per cent of people between 15 and 25 living with HIV are adolescent girls and young women, and this has risen by over 13 per cent in the past decade.

The scale of this problem is vast, and yet its victims are silent. But the problem is visible, its reality is tangible and there is a positive solution. For educating, empowering and protecting younger females is a crucial step on the road to economic development at all levels. Research has shown that girls who receive more education will marry later and have fewer children (later), and be able to choose their husband.

This combination of factors will lead to them facing fewer risks to their health from pregnancies and less financial pressure with fewer mouths to feed. In addition to this, each extra year of education they receive has been shown to have a substantial positive impact on their future earning prospects. Moreover these benefits will not only affect one generation, as girls who marry and have children later will in turn be better placed to protect their own children.

But when did you last see a vulnerable African or Asian girl or adolescent woman in the spotlight representing her's, womankind's and the world's problems? The very nature of the problem has led to the mass of people it afflicts being voiceless.

Human rights day therefore provides the perfect opportunity to recognise and address the issue of protecting the rights of the developing world's girls and adolescent women. For one of the world's greatest problems is one of its greatest opportunities.

It's time to start channelling development assistance to the people we hear the least, and who need our help the most.

EPP deputy Véronique Mathieu is a vice-chair of the European parliament's working group on reproductive health, HIV/Aids and development