For all young girls today, existence is not easy. A happy upbringing with resources to discover, play and feel safe is yet a distant probability. Deprived of their basic rights and loaded with adult roles, adolescents are frequently exposed to work exploitation, trafficking, social withdrawal associated with an early wedding, morbidity, or mortality as a result of earlier pregnancy and childbirth-related difficulties, sexual abuse, and domestic violence.

Living as an adolescent girl in times of conflict or war means even greater risks than an adolescent boy. In any corner of the world, adolescent girls are equally helpless in conflict crises and situations. Besides, there are yet many “forgotten crises’ ‘ across the world, to which nobody pays attention.

Girls who are fleeing or live in tense zones, or girls who have been shifted as an effect of environmental change, natural calamities, or war, face crucial and devastating effects. Research has proved, for example, that when crises or conflicts shift adolescent girls from their schools and homes, their schooling is disrupted, exposing them to a high risk of exploitation and making them even more helpless to gender-based and sexual violence, forced earlier marriage, and earlier pregnancy.

Particularly harming girls during this critical stage of development, these traumas have a wider impact. They can pose a severe threat to peace and hamper efforts to achieve sustainable development. When girls are wedded off early, they generally drop out of school. When they drop out of school, they are normally unable to acquire the personal and professional skills that lead to the type of career that can yield a steady income and enable them to empower their families. The negative effects snowball, limiting efforts to create a safer and more fair world.

Many international standards have been defined to ensure the protection of women and girls from discrimination and violence and to entrust them to lead their communities toward a more friendly, wealthy, and fair future. However, while they are a worthy beginning point, none of these norms focuses on the specific demographic of girls in crisis settings. We are all aware that this is glaring negligence in today’s world, where girls are increasingly targets of exploitation and violence.

Adolescent girls have the strength to be meaningful agents of positive change in their communities, in the center of conflict and crises as well as in periods of peace. They deserve to be accepted seriously, especially in matters that question them directly. As for us adults, we must give them all the help we can.