According to the EFE news agency 75 million girls worldwide do not receive a secondary education, 64% of all HIV/AIDS cases are in women under the age of 24 and every three seconds a girl is forced to get married. In several Latin America and the Caribbean countries the statistics are no less reassuring:
- In 2009, 15.5% of Mexican girls between the age of 15 and 19 had at least one child partly as a result of 61.2% of teens who did not use birth control.
- 69% of the 7551 reported cases of domestic or sexual violence in Peru during the first eight months of this year involved girls under the age of 17.
- A survey taken two years ago showed that 43% of women in the Dominican Republic aged between 20 and 49 had married before reaching the age of 18.
- 70% of Bolivian girls do not got to school while 30% of girls residing in rural areas finish elementary school.
- 248 girls under the age of 14 were killed last year in Colombia, which is up from 176 in 2010.
- 14% of Ecuadorian indigenous girls between the ages of 5 and 17 do not attend school.
- Roland Angerer of the Plan International NGO told EFE that for Central American girls the “quality of education is worse” than other regions and the levels of malnutrition are “worrying”.
