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Girls outline violence, injustice before U.N. audience

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published March 4, 2007

UNITED NATIONS - A 16-year-old Nepalese girl burst into tears describing her work in a match factory to help support her mother. A Jordanian teen spoke out about violence against girls in rural areas. A former child soldier from Congo cried when she recalled her suffering as a sex slave.

The three are among more than 200 young people attending a high-level meeting of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, which this year is focusing on discrimination and violence against girls. They spoke at a panel and a news conference about issues that concern them, ranging from rape, trafficking and prostitution to education, child labor and AIDS.

"The most important message is that governments should ensure that every working child gets a free education," said Sunita Tamang, lamenting that in her community in Nepal "people think that if you educate a girl child, it will only embarrass you."

There was a time, she said tearfully, when she couldn't go to school because she had to work to help her mother, a single parent. But now, through a program supported by the U.N. children's agency, UNICEF, she attends classes in the morning.

"What is unachievable if given an opportunity?" she asked at the crowded panel session.

Golfidan Khader Al Abassy, 18, of Jordan, described the discrimination against girls in families, schools and in the workplace in her country.

Madeleine - whose last name was withheld for security reasons - was recruited at age 11 into a militia in Congo. She spent two years fighting on the front lines, and was demobilized in 2004.

She spoke of sexual slavery and the international community's failure to hold warlords accountable for exploiting children.

[Last modified March 4, 2007, 00:44:59]