It's a bleak 'Day of the Girl' because of the pandemic. But no one's giving up hope

October 11 marks the 10th anniversary of the International Day of the Girl. It's a day created by the United Nations to "highlight and address the needs and challenges girls face."

It's also a day to assess where girls stand: what they want and what the world needs to do to give them their rights.

But finding signs of progress for girls in 2022 is difficult.

I asked one of the experts I interviewed for this story if she could offer a reason to be hopeful for the future of girls. She's Agnes Igoye, Uganda's deputy national coordinator of the prevention of trafficking in persons during the first two years of the pandemic and a Senior Aspen New Voices fellow.

Instead of offering hope, Igoye replied with a cause for concern: "In 10 years, the children born of incest will have grown, so we'll have to have that discussion as a world."

She's referring to one of the many ways that COVID-19 has had an impact on the lives of girls. During the pandemic, she said, parents are going out to work or do errands and kids have not been able to go to school – their safe space – during various lockdowns.

Girls were often in homes "with a lot of abuse," says, a human rights lawyer in Kenya who is also an Aspen fellow.