BOOKS OF YESTERDAY AND TODAY: UN. World Girls Defense in 17 points – Almomento
Teresa Gill
laislaquebrillaba@yahoo.com.mx
United Nations, to eliminate child marriage and mutilation. The International Day of the Girl, October 11, continues to recognize that there is a more vulnerable gender in the world from an early age: the female. Lack of protection, which in most cases is imposed by the family itself. The preference for boys and the revocation of physical and cultural opportunities for girls is expressed in numbers: as early as 2021, according to UN data, 200 million girls had undergone genital mutilation with clitoral ablation and there were 650 million registered marriages of girls under the age of 18 in the world. Data from Mexico as of 2018 reported that of 35,000 marriages, 30,000 were to girls under the age of 18, some arranged in childhood by their parents and in some cases reneged on for reasons related to tradition. This situation, recognized by the international organization in other countries, like mutilation, is placed as an important part in five of the 17 points provided by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), in its program for sustainable development 2019-2024.
THERE IS PROGRESS IN MEXICO, ALTHOUGH THERE IS STILL A LONG WAY TO GO: UNICEF
With more than 40 million children and adolescents representing 35 percent of Mexico’s population, 51 percent still live in poverty. It should be borne in mind that of this population slightly more than half are girls. The position of this sector is generally lower than that of the other sex, not only in education but also in health and protection. Complaints against child marriage are mostly in traditional communities. Also, child pregnancy and other problems such as obesity, which they share with children and adolescents, are indicated in 33 percent of babies from 6 months to eleven years and 36 percent from 12 to 18 years, situations addressed by the Mexican institutions of the General Law of Rights of Children and Adolescents, (State Gazette with the latest reform of March 23, 2022), in which UNICEF also emphasizes and acknowledges that the country has the technical and institutional conditions to address the problem. There are also the most serious cases, trafficking, femicide and sexual abuse, usually at home.
SOR JUANA THE PROTECTED GIRL WHO CONDEMNED ABUSE AND DISCRIMINATION
Education and respect are what make their great values flourish in childhood. Most of the female talent in various disciplines in the world is from women who started their education as children and were supported. If anyone has shown in the literary history of Mexico the importance of this education and good treatment of women from childhood, it is our great pride Juana Ramirez de Asbaye, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, daughter of the Basque captain Pedro Manuel de Asbaye Vargas and Isabel Ramirez . The famous nun Jeronimite is considered the phoenix of America and the Tenth Muse. Treated with great respect as a child and tutored by her Andalusian grandfather, Pedro Ramírez de Santillana, she learned to read at the age of three and wrote her first poems before she was eight, when she emigrated to the country’s capital. Access to this knowledge, which he proclaimed for all women, took place in his grandfather’s library in San Miguel de Nepantla, where he was born in 1648, which allowed him to approach many authors who were forbidden to others in mid seventeenth century. Although she was a privileged girl who always had the protection of her family, especially her grandfather who was a poet and a great reader, at a very early age, when she was still in Amekameka, where she spent part of her childhood, she understood the situation of inferiority, which housed blacks who worked on the family farm and other environments who were treated like slaves. They were bought from dealers for sale in America. Mainly in the response of Sor Filotea de la Cruz addressed to the Archbishop of Puebla, she refers to these cases and emphasizes the protection of women from childhood and the need for them to have access to education and knowledge. In the lists that have been made of the great writers and poets of history, education is always emphasized as a foundation in childhood, and in the international recognition that is given especially to girls, this resource and respect is emphasized. And the fundamental right to health and physical protection is also added.
