On Sunday, the world marked International Day of the Girl. It’s one of those awareness days that’s easy to scroll past, but this year’s UN theme stopped me: “End child marriage and invest in girls’ rights.”
What I liked is where the theme came from. It was shaped by girls themselves, along with girl-led networks and organisations that work with them, so it isn’t adults deciding what’s best on their behalf. The idea behind it is simple. Being a girl shouldn’t decide what you can do, where you can go or who you become.
The UN also points out that war, crisis and displacement make everything harder for girls. The risks of child marriage and sexual violence go up when families are uprooted and communities are stretched. So the call is to back laws that protect girls, put real money into their education and opportunities, and support the community work that changes attitudes from within.
It’s tempting to file all this under “somewhere else”. But many families end up in Scotland for exactly these reasons: conflict, instability, the need to find somewhere safe. Some of the girls who’ve been through that are now sitting in our classrooms and living on our streets, while their families are still working out a new country. How we welcome them matters more than we might think.
That’s why I wanted to mention the North Lanarkshire Ethnic Minorities Association, or NLEMA. It’s a grassroots charity that works to bring people together across North Lanarkshire, supporting what it calls New Scots: ethnic minority individuals, families and groups who are settling in and building a life here. Its work is built on dignity, respect for culture and the resilience of communities. In practice that means support with integration, advocacy, wellbeing and community engagement.
None of that is separate from what the UN is asking for. Rights don’t mean much if you don’t feel safe, can’t get fair access to opportunities, or live in a community that doesn’t understand you. Those are the things a charity like NLEMA works on every day, and it’s local work like this that turns big global promises into something a real person can feel.
So if this day made you think, don’t leave it there. Learn a bit more, listen to girls and young women, and support the groups doing the quiet work close to home. Every girl deserves the chance to learn, to grow and to decide her own future.