LONDON: If countries ended forced marriage, child labour, female genital mutilation and other practices undermining girls’ health and rights, their economies could be billions of dollars richer for it, a UN agency said on Thursday.

Around the world, 16 million girls between the ages of six and 11 never start school, many because they are married off or forced to work to help their families financially, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said in a report.

It said developing countries could reap a dividend of $21 billion a year if all 10-year-old girls completed secondary education, echoing studies that show a correlation between improved literacy for girls and higher earnings later in life.

“Education is the world’s best investment. Whenever a girl’s potential goes unrealised, we all lose,” Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of UNFPA, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview.

The report comes a year after world leaders adopted an ambitious set of global goals to end poverty and inequality by 2030. One of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is targets gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.

“How we support girls today will determine what our world looks like. The SDGs give world leaders a real opportunity to get things right,” Osotimehin said. He blamed gender inequality on the “poor awareness of the state of girls’ human rights and a lack of accountability from political leaders worldwide.”

Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2016