Unicef official calls for action to bridge digital divide between boys and girls

The private sector must play a greater role in closing the digital divide between boys and girls, particularly for young girls in low-income countries, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef).

Up to 90 per cent of adolescent girls in low-income countries remain offline, depriving economies of nearly $1 trillion in GDP over the past decade, a loss that could hit $1.5 trillion by the end of 2025. Their male peers are also twice as likely to be online, Unicef analysis shows.

The situation is such that there is now an urgent need for collaboration between governments, industry leaders and humanitarian organisations to ensure equitable digital access for all children, Carla Haddad Mardini, Unicef's director of private sector partnerships and fund-raising, told The National.

“If you look at the digital divide between the Global North and the Global South, and specifically when it comes to women, it disproportionately impacts women and young girls and it impacts futures in terms of access to the internet, to learning, and developing digital foundational skills,” Ms Mardini said. “Digital numeracy and digital skills are critical. We need children and young people to be equipped to benefit from the advantages that will come from tech, from AI, and from all the improvements happening in that space.”

Ms Mardini pointed to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which took place earlier this month, as an example of the gender gap. “There were very few women there; the sector remains male-dominated,” she said. “Unfortunately, not enough women are breaking barriers at the highest levels in tech. We did, however, bring two young girls who have excelled – one from Ecuador and one from Lebanon – because we believe that, to bridge the digital divide, young people must have a stronger voice in these spaces.”

What is Unicef doing to help?

Unicef has launched several global initiatives to expand digital access and support learning for displaced children. One example is the Giga initiative, which is set on connecting every school in the world to the internet.

Another project, co-created with Microsoft, is the Learning Passport, which helps displaced children continue their education and enable equitable access to high quality learning for more than 10 million learners in more than 46 countries, half of them girls.

“It allows children on the move who are displaced in countries suffering from natural disasters or armed conflict, or who have become refugees, to continue their learning,” Ms Mardini said. “If there’s no connectivity, they can do it offline, but it’s adapted to their reality and their situation. [The Learning Passport] can cater to their needs and [allow them to] enter the labour force with the right skills and the right quality learning.”

The Global Coalition on Youth Mental Health, a collaboration between Unicef and the Z Zurich Foundation, a global community investment charity, hopes to ensure child and youth mental health is prioritised on the social, economic, and political agenda, strengthening the skills and supportive environments for the mental health of 50 million children and young people in 150 countries by 2030.

Another major initiative is Laaha, a virtual platform for young girls that provides digital access and resources. “It’s a space online to help young girls access information,” Ms Mardini said. “It’s fascinating.” Laaha currently reaches half a million girls in eight languages.

Education as a lifeline

Education is just as critical as access to clean water, food, and health care, particularly in conflict zones, Ms Mardini said, as she shared her own experience of how precarious access to learning can be.

“I come from Lebanon. During the war in the 1980s and 1990s, the number one priority for my parents was to keep us in learning,” she said. “Whether the school was closed, shut down, bombed, whatever, we would sometimes have the teacher come home and, as a community, organise ourselves for group classes, or even study in bunkers to keep learning when you didn’t even know if you would be alive the next day.

“Education, for Unicef and for us, is life-saving. If it’s protected at the same time as water and sanitation, access to health care, then we ensure that children and young people can have a future.”

A call to action

Ms Mardini called on the private sector to do more, noting that no single entity can bridge the gap alone. “Unicef is not a watchdog of the private sector [but we have] a very strong dialogue at industry level. We know businesses focus on their bottom line, productivity, and profitability, but we think there is no sustainable profitability if the impacts are egregious on society and on children, specifically. There’s no productivity and profitability without equity and without safety, and this has to be done from the design phase.”

Ms Mardini added: “No UN agency, multilateral agency, or NGO, whether international or local, can do it alone. We really need to come hand in hand and work together at the intersection of private and public sector – to make sure no child or young person is left behind.”

However, Ms Mardini noted that greater connectivity comes at a cost and stressed the importance of online safety. “There are risks and downsides, and Unicef works hard with the sector at industry level to discuss how we can make sure child online safety is a top priority from the design phase of the products and not an afterthought.

“We want to see the private sector move from a no-harm approach to a do-good approach and, even further, to consider themselves as actors that can impact and drive societal benefits.”