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Queen Rania: Stop Ignoring The Girls!
Global leaders are overlooking one of their most valuable weapons in the fight against everything from climate change to economic turmoil. Jordan's Queen Rania on the surprise solution to many of the world's most intractable problems.
Use whatever cliché you like: shooting ourselves in the foot; one arm tied behind our backs; sailing at half mast. The condition of millions of women and girls around the world is so illogical it verges on the absurd.
We face a devastating combination of global crises: economic turmoil, climate change, pandemics, poverty, extremism, conflict, human trafficking. They’re woven together, impossibly difficult to unravel, like a Gordian knot slowly tightening around our necks.
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Think about girls: In all their soft, giggling, cute, and vulnerable glory, girls have the power to turn our world around. Development theory espouses it. Experience proves it. Common sense knows it.
Largely devoid of rights and defenseless, too many girls do not enjoy the protective care of citizenship and lack official identification such as birth certificates or government ID cards, which would allow them to attend school, vote, and access public services. Here’s what happens: The majority of the world’s 130 million illiterate youth are girls. In sub-Saharan Africa, 122 million girls live on less than $1 a day. And nearly half of all sexual assaults worldwide are against girls aged 15 and younger.
Then this happens: Each of these girls turn into women who pass on the baton of intergenerational poverty to their children in the most interminable endurance race ever, where the end is never in sight, and no one ever wins.
Yet, if more global leaders placed girls at the top of their development agendas, and matched their earnest TV tones with investment in education, we could rewrite this cruel narrative. Because when girls go to school, life gets better for everyone.
For girls: They gain confidence and self-respect; they delay marriage and childbirth; and they become more likely to educate their own daughters. For every extra year a girl is educated, her income can increase by as much as 20 percent.
For nations: More girls in secondary school leads to fewer infant deaths, lower fertility, lower rates of HIV and AIDS, and better child nutrition. Just a 1 percent rise in the number of girls attending secondary school can boost a country's annual per capita income growth by 0.3 percent. What a deal.
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Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
thelara
Dear queen rania....since 5 years i trying to contact with your majesty on your website (queenrania.jo) but i didnt found any reply and many people in your office underestimate me several time... and i can not trust by any one now... please queen rania want to listen to me without mediators
thelara
Dear queen rania....since 5 years i trying to contact with your majesty on your website (queenrania.jo) but i didnt found any reply and many people in your office underestimate me several time... and i can not trust by any one now... please queen rania want to listen to me without mediators
Queen rania i love you so much........ but please queen rania can you listen to me without any mediators???? ( without mediators) ??? plz
SUBHODUTTA
hi,,,,,can u send me ur mail id?my id is subho.dutta2009@gmail.com
PabloF
Dear Queen,
I am disappointed to see that you still don't seem to get it. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results doesn't work. You said we need political will, but we both know politicians make promises they can't keep. So we can rule that out. Next, you mention the "shortfall of financing." It is not the lack of money that will solve the problems. You can think that throwing a lot of money at a problem will solve it.
Apple, a company you worked for, was formed even when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak didn't think they had even money to pull it off. Same thing for Google, which you know well since you attend their Zeitgeist meetings.
So we're left with leadership. Let me throw you a cliché® "Think outside the box." I am working on an entire educational system that is entirely online and available in 40 languages. You mentioned before that to educate all the children in the Middle East it would cost 17 billion dollars. Rather than spend that money, how about give the children computer and internet connection which give them access to the education. With the spare billions going into micro-loans so the parents can create jobs.
Sincerely,
Pablo F.
samiaq
I will have to agree with Pablo here..I am jordanian and I as many of other Jordanians support and thank the awreness her majesty is raising and voicing the intractable problems sometimes the taboo n our own societies..it is the POLITICAL will and the billion "promises" we hear on a daily basis yet nothng is effective on the ground..Also, i thin when it comes to financing these projects its more about which projects & issues that are top priority to be financed first..
Piscator
You Go Girl!
RulaMughrabi
Thanks Your Majesty, that's wonderful and very strong!
I hope that the world can do "actions" about this important illogical reality, although reality should be the opposite! i.e the default reality should be that girls r n schools and women r a "productive" part of this world and not only a "reproductive part"!
Come on leaders, and give the world some reality!
sguhan2009
your majesty i am really happy to read your views and soon will write you
FatFreddy
If women ran the world, there would be no wars and no poverty.
The best way out of poverty has been, and always will be, education. In the state I live in, in the US, it has been proven, that every dollar spent on funding Community Colleges, by the State, returns seven in future revenue. Education benefits everyone.
cbl99201
"If women ran the world, there would be no wars and no poverty."
That's ridiculous, FatFreddy.
FatFreddy
You've never heard that before?
cbl99201
Dear Queen Rania,
You desire to increase girl's rights and their participation in society and politics? The solution is obvious: convert your country to Christianity, which is exceedingly more girl-friendly then Islam is.
johnnynyc
Your ignorance of Islam is stunning.
cbl99201
Women enjoy more rights under Christianized societies then under Muslim societies. If this truth eludes you, you are truely blinded.
RulaMughrabi
When we get rid of our shallow ideas about religions; we will b on the right track! u sure seem not to know anything about Islam, although I do fully agree that many muslims dont act Islam the right way!
Islam has given the rights to muslim women n all aspects.
U should also blv that all religions hv "one core" which is blving n God.
so please think b4 u express ur opinions!
FatFreddy
Wow. You said my statement was ridiculous?
Perhaps you need to reread Genesis. The Bible blames a woman for the loss of the Garden of Eden. Eve was tempted and fooled by the Snake, and then seduced Adam. The entire premise of the Bible could be viewed as misogynist.
johnnynyc
A bunch of men in a patriarchal society writing about women?
What possibly could be misogynist about that?
cbl99201
You are mistaken. Genesis does not blame Eve for the loss of the Garden of Eden.
cbl99201
Also, for anyone who cares, there is no record at all of God banishing Eve from the garden, only Adam. Perhaps He did banish her and it is not recorded, or perhaps her desire for her husband Adam compelled her to accompany him. We can't know from the writing of Genesis.
Citroen2cv
A true and elegant solution, Majesty. I will find a way to help.
FatFreddy
On second thought:
I'm sorry I responded to the comment of cbl99201. I have never done this before, but I would like to formally request that the moderator remove the comment of cbl99201, due to its insensitivity, bigotry, and shear stupidity. The international implications of the comment go far beyond my own Libertarian beliefs of Free Speech. And remove my response as well.
cbl99201
If being FOR the rights of women makes me insensitive, bigoted and stupid, then so be it.
RulaMughrabi
FatFreddy,
we r here to open a mature communication maybe, so gv more patience. We all come from different back grounds ,each one of us hv different ideas and a different way of thinking! So u shouldnt regret expressing ur ideas!
cbl99201 should gv more respect I blv! but its ok lets open a mature discussion. cbl99201 what do u know about Islam???
cbl99201
I see now that my post may have offended some Muslims. I'm sorry guys, but I call them as I see them.
Raboosha
Girls are the women of furture, we have to take care of them.
DexterVanDango
I believe this link would be of the greatest interest?
http://www.vimeo.com/5564179
zygarch
Hopefully a new global movement is forming. Find out more about it and how you can help. Visit:
http://www.halftheskymovement.org/
and read Nick Kristoff's book "Half the Sky"
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