URBAN AND ONLINE SPACES PRESENT NEW OPPORTUNITIES - AND NEW DANGERS - FOR
GIRLS: PLAN CANADA

TORONTO, Sept. 22 /CNW/ - Urban and digital spaces offer young people more opportunities than ever before, but they can also be extremely dangerous places for marginalized girls in developing countries, a major new report from Plan International warns today.

Plan's fourth annual Because I Am A Girl Report, Digital and Urban Frontiers: Girls in a Changing Landscape, examines urban and online environments and the potentially enormous prospects - and threats—they can present to young people in the developing and the developed world. 

With more and more people from all corners of the globe living in cities and using the Internet, as well as the rapid growth of mobile phone ownership, the opportunities for children and young people have never been greater.

The report, however, also examines the fact that prejudice and poverty exclude millions of girls from taking advantage of the transformative possibilities that urban and online environments offer.  With exploitation, bullying and the threat of violence being rife in both cities and online, both are extremely dangerous places for the most marginalized and vulnerable girls.

Plan's report launches on the concluding day of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Summit in New York City - a Summit to conduct a comprehensive review of MDGs to date and the next steps needed to meet the goals by 2015.

"Gender equality is not only one of the MDGs, it is the pre-condition to achieving all other goals," said Rosemary McCarney, President and CEO of Plan Canada. "Urban and online environments, in particular, are crucial new arenas which could and should provide girls with real opportunities to improve their education, their health, and give them the chance to grasp what life has to offer them in the twenty-first century."

Plan's report finds that many girls who migrate from the rural areas will find better education, healthcare and economic opportunities in the cities, as well as more autonomy and independence. UN statistics show girls' school attendance to be 18 per cent higher in cities than in rural areas for 10-14 year-olds in developing countries.

But countless girls have their hopes cruelly dashed in the city. Millions end up working in sweatshops or as menial domestic servants in someone else's home, and living in squalid and overcrowded slums. Worse still, an estimated  30 million girls are forced to live on the city streets - often "sleeping rough" - where they are exposed to the worst kinds of exploitation, violence, crime and disease.

The Internet offers girls unprecedented possibilities to be well informed and to communicate with the world beyond their family circle. Information and communications technologies have enormous economic value for adolescent girls and young women. If they do not acquire modern technological skills, they will be disadvantaged in the workplace; mobile phone ownership helps them keep in touch with friends and family as well as helping them to stay safe and contact someone in an emergency.

However, cyberspace also provides an easy means for organized crime syndicates to facilitate human trafficking and to recruit young girls into the sex industry.  And predatory individuals find it easy to use the Internet for duping children into sexual relationships, creating and circulating child pornography, or harassing and bullying girls with threatening messages.

Plan's report argues that girls need to be able to develop the skills to protect themselves and to recognize both the threats and the opportunities that await them, both in cities and online.  Plan says international, national and municipal authorities must make it their responsibility to make both their cities and the Internet safe and girl-friendly. It calls for:

• Municipalities to provide safe residential spaces, outreach programmes, legal services and helplines for street girls;
• Zero tolerance policy on the use of violence by police;
• Training for transport staff and public education strategies to raise awareness of the scale and severity of sexual harassment and violence on public transport systems;
• Schools and colleges to increase girls' access to and take up of science, mathematics and vocational training;
• More research by both governments and IT companies on how to introduce effective measures against technological exploitation and abuse of children.

About Plan

Plan is a global movement for change, mobilizing millions of people around the world to support social justice for children in developing countries. Founded in 1937, Plan is now one of the world's oldest and largest international development agencies, working in partnership with millions of people around the world to end global poverty. Not for profit, independent and inclusive of all faiths and cultures, Plan has only one agenda: to improve the lives of children. For more information, visit plancanada.ca

For further information:

Media contact:
Kristy Payne, Plan Canada
O: 416 568-6525, ext 211
C: 416 568-6525
[email protected]