Using their own powerful stories, three girls from Togo, Ghana and Haiti stood up and made visible the violence and discrimination that they and their peers face in their home countries and offered possible solutions to eliminating those abuses.
           While each story was unique, the girls were united in their call for education to eliminate the violence. The “Girls Speak Out” session, co-sponsored by the School Sisters of Notre Dame on Thursday, was held in conjunction with the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women meeting.
           “Harmful cultural practices are the result of discrimination and are the cause of violence,” said Agnes Agyeman-Barnie, a student from Ghana who is attending the Commission on the Status of Women meeting with the delegation from the School Sisters of Notre Dame. “I have witnessed both. If we are silent and don’t talk about it, we will never find solutions to eradicate it.”
           The discrimination begins at birth, Agnes said. When family and friends arrive to visit the new baby, their first question will be, “Is it a human being?” “No” means the baby was a girl.
           “From the moment of her appearance in this world, a girl is discriminated against and treated as inferior,” Agnes said.
           She described a common practice in which a girl as young as age eight may be given to a fetish priest to atone for the actions of a male family member. The priest seeks favor from the gods so that there will be no curse against the family.
           “In reality, the young girl tends to face violence and slavery in the hands of this fetish priest,” Agnes said. “The girls are afraid that if they leave then their families will be punished.
           “How do we convince these people that this practice is evil and a violation of human rights?”
           Agnes also spoke of the harmful practice of female genital mutilation, a right of passage in many cultures, and she spoke of how poor families thinking that they are giving their daughters to better lives often are handing them over to human traffickers.
           Magnoudewa (Bella) Pitekelabou belongs to a radio club at her school in Togo, which gives her a forum to raise awareness about violence and discrimination against girls. But even school is not a safe haven from abuse.
           “Before I came here, I had to ask permission to go to the capital of Togo to get a visa. I only for a day, but when I came back to school, I was told that they had studied four chapters that day. I managed to copy two of the chapters, but I was short two more. When I returned, the history and geography teacher told me to get out of class because I hadn’t copied the remaining chapters.
           “I don’t like to cause problems so I went to the headmaster. He called the teacher and after talking to him gave me six beatings. I don’t like to cause problems.”
           Trafficking also is an issue in her country, where girls will be taken from their village and brought to unfamiliar locations where they face beatings if they do not work or do as they are told. Their only alternatives are to go into prostitution or live on the streets.
           In Haiti, Roodnir Joseph was given by her poor parents to another family where they hoped she would have a better life. Instead, she was forced to work for that household as a “restavek.”
           “When everybody went to sleep, I had to still work,” Roodnir said. “Then I had to wake up at 5 o’clock and do more work. I had to go look for water far away. If I didn’t come back with water, they would beat me up. It was only when I was starving that they would give me anything to eat. I was in dire need of clothes, and they would not give me clothes. Those are the things I suffered through as a restavek.
           “When I became liberated, they taught me that I was a person like anybody else. I have value and rights as a human being. That is why today I am helping to liberate other people like they did.”
           All three of the presenters are recipients of Mary Purcell grants from UNICEF's Working Group on Girls so that they could participate in this year’s Commission on the Status of Women, which is focusing on violence and discrimination against the girl child.
           “They have put a human face on a long list of violations against the girl child and pointing to the root causes of that violence,” said S. Ann Scholz, SSND, co-chair of the panel. “Thank you for pointing to solutions. Education is the key. Poverty eradication is essential. Economic empowerment of women is required, and, of course, you must have strict enforcement of the laws that protect girls.
           “Thank you for calling on us to stand in solidarity and challenge each of us to ask, ‘What can I do.’”