By Lisa Anderson
NEW YORK (TrustLaw) - Adolescent girls living in the world’s cities are more likely to be educated, marry later and take part in politics, but fear of gender violence as they cross their cities for school and work may severely hamper their opportunities for success, according to a report by Plan International.
“These findings paint a dire picture of many girls being forced out of the public sphere in their cities simply for fear of their own safety. Millions of girls and young women are being held back from their right to vital opportunities by the fear of violence, lack of safe spaces and facilities. It cannot be tolerated,” Plan CEO Nigel Chapman said in a statement.
Since, for the first time, more people in the world are living in cities than in rural areas - and by 2030 about 1.5 billion of them will be girls - finding ways to reduce the increasing day-to-day risk of sexual harassment and violence is crucial for the empowerment of young women, he said.
The brutal gang rape of a young university student on a bus in New Delhi last December and her subsequent death from severe internal injuries underscored the nature of these urban risks and set off protests and a passionate national debate over violence against women in India.
Delhi is one of the five cities, along with Cairo, Egypt; Hanoi, Vietnam; Kampala, Uganda and Lima, Peru, where Plan conducted a survey of how girls assess the dangers they face. The results are presented in its report “Adolescent Girls’ Views on Safety in Cities”, which was released on International Women’s Day at the United Nations in conjunction with the meeting of UN Commission on the Status of Women.
The report’s sobering findings are strikingly similar from city to city despite the disparate settings where over 1,000 adolescent girls and 400 boys between the ages of 11 and 23 were surveyed.
WALKING IN PUBLIC SPACES
What the researchers found was that very few girls in the study claimed that they ‘always’ feel safe when walking in public spaces and that most of them had “mapped” out the places most dangerous and to be avoided depending on the time of day.
In Kampala, for example, 80 percent of girls said they never or seldom felt safe when walking in public spaces. In Lima only 2.2 percent of the girls said they always felt safe walking in public.
“In public spaces and in the street, the city is very dangerous. There are gangs, robberies, assaults; you can be kidnapped, followed, sexually harassed (and) raped. Walking in the streets is dangerous, especially in desolate areas; it is more dangerous at night when there is low light,” a girl from Lima told researchers.
Overall, girls knew which streets were dangerously dark at night and which were well-lit. They had determined which parks might make them vulnerable to sexual attack or rape and at which times of day public spaces were more and less safe for them.
DISTRUST OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT AND POLICE
In nearly all cities, girls worried about the dangers of traveling on public transportation, where they distrusted both the drivers and their fellow passengers. In general, “they reported feeling uncomfortable, unsafe, and disrespected while travelling” and felt they could not rely on others to come to their aid if they were being harassed.
In Delhi, only 3.3 percent of girls said they always felt safe when using public transportation, and slightly fewer in Lima reporting the same.
In Cairo, currently roiled by revolutionary protests and violence, nearly 40 percent of girls said they never felt safe on public transportation and that their families no longer permit them to travel in public spaces unaccompanied.
All of the girls mentioned the problems posed by a lack of quality city services, including lack of safe public toilets and emergency services, such as police.
Most troubling, perhaps, was the fact that girls in most of the cities cited the lack of formal policing or security guards in their communities. Even if police were available, in all five cities, girls expressed doubts about even reaching out to them for help as “they were often unresponsive, untrustworthy, or too far away to respond in a timely manner”.
Nearly 60 percent of the girls surveyed in Hanoi said they seldom or rarely had access to emergency services, notably the police. In Cairo, 44 percent of girls said the same.
Among the report’s recommendations are:
-Increase girls’ autonomous mobility in the city through safe and reliable transport
-Improve girls’ access to quality city services including emergency and basic services, such as safe, clean and well-lit public toilets; safer parks and greater opportunities for girls to contribute to decision-making for safer cities at the municipal level.
The report is part of the Because I am a Girl (BIAAG) Urban Programme, which is a collaboration between Plan International, Women in Cities International (WICI) and UN-HABITAT.
“It will undo the efforts of governments and communities if girls are abandoning opportunities to progress for fear of sexual harassment and violence in cities,” said Deepali Sood, director of Plan’s “Because I am a Girl” campaign, in a statement.
The BIAAG programme aims to make cities safer and more responsive to the needs of adolescent girls, who are often the most vulnerable population in a city and the one whose concerns are least often taken into consideration during urban planning.
The video “Safer Cities: A Girl’s Eye View of Living in the City,” can be seen on YouTube here.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
