A robust statistical tool to measure African governments’ commitment to girls’ rights: The Girl-Friendliness Index

• Published in: Child indicators research Vol. 15; no. 3; pp. 703 - 729
• Main Authors: Woldekidan, Negussie Dejene, Abegaz, Yehualashet Mekonen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.06.2022; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Budgets; Child Advocacy; Child and School Psychology; Childrens rights; Correlation; Early Childhood Education; Exploitation; Females; Girls; Governance; Human development; Kindness; National income; Quality of Life Research; Ratings & rankings; Reliability; Social Sciences; Social Work; Statistical analysis; Welfare; Well being; Girl’s rights; African charter; Disproportionate discrimination; Wellbeing; Gender inequality; Girl friendliness; Statistical tool
• ISSN: 1874-897X; 1874-8988
• DOI: 10.1007/s12187-021-09889-y

The Girl-Friendliness Index (GFI) is a statistical tool developed to comprehensively assess the performance of African governments in realising the rights and wellbeing of girls. The framework is composed of three central pillars of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) which deal with girls’ rights to: Protection, Provision and Participation. The construction of the index follows standard procedures. Detailed statistical analysis was also carried out to test and evaluate the strength and reliability of the tool. The analysis confirmed that the GFI is a strong statistical tool to measure and rank governments’ friendliness towards girls in Africa. The GFI was calculated for 52 African countries using the most recent comparable data available and the results were cross-analysed with other variables such as national income and state of good governance. According to the GFI results, Mauritius, Tunisia, South Africa, Seychelles, and Algeria were the five top ranking countries, relative to the others, that scored a minimum of 74% each. On the other hand, the five countries at the bottom of the ranking were: South Sudan, Chad, Eritrea, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Niger. These countries scored low (15.9%, 17%, 25%, 27.2%, and 27.7% percent, respectively). Key conclusion drawn from the paper is that top performing countries were countries that have put in place comprehensive laws and policies to protect girls from abuse and exploitation and have also allocated higher shares of their income to improve girls’ wellbeing. Poorly performing countries, conversely, were those which have failed to put in place gender-sensitive laws and policies, fell short of allocating adequate budgets, and essentially are ineffective in enforcing laws and policies in place. Another interesting aspect of the analysis is the assessment of the degree of correlation between GFI and other well-known and related indices such as the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG). The results have shown that the GFI has a strong positive correlation with both indices. These positive correlations show the linkages of performance in realizing girls’ rights with human development and good governance such that the more the government fulfilled the rights of girls the more it contributes to good governance and development.