“Gender-based differences in legal rights and status particularly affect girls and women.” (1) An initial step in securing a girl’s protection and legal status is to legally register her birth. Birth registration is a fundamental means of securing girls’ rights. Without birth registration and identification documents, children, especially girls, may be unable to access critical social protection, health services, future education, and legal status.
Girls who lack adult care and protection may have limited access to legal assistance and other support. (2) Laws and judicial systems often treat men and women differently around issues of marriage and divorce, reproductive choice, access to health, social protection and legal services, and property ownership. To address these gender disparities, OVC programs can partner to train health, legal, justice, and other sector officials to:
- Ensure birth registration for all children.
- Implement protective legal environments for women and girls at increased risk for and living with HIV.
- Champion gender equity in access to services and legal rights and respectfully respond in ways that do not discriminate but protect girls’ safety and confidentiality. (3)
- Ensure appropriate, timely, comprehensive care and support to bring together child protection, social services and legal services for women and girls who have experienced gender-based violence or other serious crimes. (4)
- Protect girls against the risk of early child marriage by working with communities to address norms around early marriage and looking at age requirements within marriage laws.
In Ethiopia, the education and child protection sectors have partnered to uphold girls’ legal rights through the establishment of primary school Girls’ Advisory Committees. These committees of female and male teachers, community and student members, and a female teacher/advisor linked to the parent-teacher association work to address gender discrimination and prevent child marriage. Students link the community and the school, reporting on impending child marriages, abduction, teasing, harassment and girls’ extended absence from school. The Girls’ Advisory Committee then visits parents to dissuade them from following through with an early child marriage. Parents who persist are invited to school, encouraged to cancel the marriage, and informed that early child marriage is illegal. (5)