Section 1 Short title
This Act may be cited as the “Keeping Girls in School Act”.
Keeping Girls in School Act
A BILL
To keep girls in school around the world, and for other purposes.
Sec. 2 Appropriate congressional committees defined
Sec. 3 Purpose and findings
Purpose— The purpose of this Act is to support empowerment, economic security, and educational opportunities for adolescent girls around the world.
Findings— Congress makes the following findings:
Adolescence is a critical period in a girl’s life, when significant physical, emotional, and social changes shape her future.
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), approximately 130,000,000 girls around the world are not in school and millions more are failing to acquire basic reading, writing, and numeracy skills.
Girls between the ages of 10 and 19 are three times more likely than boys to be kept out of school, particularly in countries affected by conflict.
Due to discriminatory gender norms and expectations, disparities in access to safe and quality education manifest early in a girl’s life and continue to become more pronounced throughout adolescence.
Adolescent girls who are not in school are particularly vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, child, early and forced marriage, and other forms of violence which are detrimental to their futures, as evidenced by the following statistics:
Each year, 380,000 adolescent girls and young women become newly infected with HIV, more than 1,000 every day, and comprise the fastest-growing demographic for new infections in sub-Saharan Africa.
Each year, 15,000,000 adolescent girls around the world are married before their 18th birthday, and more than 700,000,000 women alive today were married as children.
One-quarter to one-half of girls in developing countries become mothers before the age of 18, and girls under 15 are five times more likely to die during childbirth than women in their 20s.
While two-thirds of countries have achieved gender parity in primary education, only 40 percent have achieved gender parity in secondary education.
Adolescent girls who remain in school are more likely to live longer, marry later, have healthier children, and, as adults, earn an income to support their families, thereby contributing to the economic advancement of communities and nations.
The United States Global Strategy to Empower Adolescent Girls has brought together the Department of State, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Peace Corps, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, as well as other agencies and programs such as the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), to address the range of challenges preventing adolescent girls from attaining an inclusive and equitable quality education leading to relevant learning outcomes.
Since July 2015, more than 100 public-private partnerships have been formed between the United States Government and external partners to support innovative and community-led solutions in targeted countries, including Malawi and Tanzania, to ensure adolescent girls receive a quality education.
PEPFAR, through its DREAMS (Determined, Resilient, Empowered, AIDS-free, Mentored, and Safe) Initiative, has worked to address a number of the specific barriers to education that adolescent girls face.
According to the United States Global Strategy to Empower Adolescent Girls, which is the first foreign policy document in the world solely dedicated to the rights and empowerment of girls globally, “[w]hile the Millennium Development Goals improved outcomes for girls in primary education, they also highlighted the need for a targeted focus on adolescents and young adults, particularly regarding the transition to and completion of secondary school”.
Sec. 4 Sense of Congress
It is the sense of Congress that—
education is a human right, and girls of all ages deserve an education that is equal, in all aspects, to that of boys;
the United States has been a global leader in efforts to expand and improve educational opportunities for those who have been traditionally disenfranchised, particularly women and girls;
gains with respect to girls’ secondary education and empowerment have been proven to correlate strongly with progress in gender equality and women’s rights, as well as economic and social progress, and achieving gender equality should be a priority goal of United States foreign policy;
achieving gender parity in both access to and quality of educational opportunity contributes significantly to economic growth and development, thereby lowering the risk for violence and instability; and
education is a lifesaving humanitarian intervention that protects the lives, futures, and well-being of girls.