In just about every corner of the world, adolescent girls face unique pressures – regarding sexuality, marriage, economic opportunity, education and violence. For a variety of reasons, adolescent girls, married and unmarried alike, have limited ability to protect themselves against unwanted, unsafe sexual encounters, as well as against unwanted and child marriage, pregnancy and disease.

Socio-economically, girls continue to have limited access to quality basic education in many parts of the world and this, in turn, limits opportunities for meaningful roles in their communities. Girls’ income-generating skills and professional opportunities are also constrained. They carry a disproportionate domestic work burden, and are denied leadership opportunities and active participation in community affairs. These many deficits, which ultimately stem from their low status in society, reinforce each other, compromising adolescent girls’ ability to fulfil their potential.

We are promoting opportunities for our best hope for the future – healthy, happy, educated and informed citizens

More recently, the HIV/AIDS pandemic has emerged as a major threat to the well-being of young women, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where three quarters of all female cases of AIDS can be found. Women now constitute almost 60 per cent of all infections in sub-Saharan Africa: more than 15 million women and girls are affected. In much of southern African, HIV prevalence is four to seven times higher among girls under the age of 18 than among boys of similar age, while 67 per cent of all HIV-positive young people are female.

Most vulnerable
For all these reasons, the United Nations Foundation has been working with the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) on the Southern African Youth (SAY) initiative. SAY is aiming to prevent the spread of AIDS among young people in eight southern African countries, focusing on the most vulnerable populations, such as girls without access to education, street children, refugees and migrants.

The SAY initiative is bringing hope and developing models of success in southern African communities. Health education and life-skills education has reached more than 100,000 adolescents in Angola. Youth clubs for thousands of girls have been established in Malawi to enhance self-esteem. School-based counselling programmes have been used in 62 Mozambican schools. Scores of successful HIV/AIDS prevention strategies and services have been initiated in South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.