[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 86 (Monday, June 1, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H3624-H3627]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
GIRLS COUNT ACT OF 2015
Mr. CHABOT. Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the
bill (S. 802) to authorize the Secretary of State and the Administrator
of the United States Agency for International Development to provide
assistance to support the rights of women and girls in developing
countries, and for other purposes.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The text of the bill is as follows:
S. 802
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Girls Count Act of 2015''.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress makes the following findings:
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(1) According to the United States Census Bureau's 2013
international figures, 1 person in 12, or close to
900,000,000 people, is a girl or young woman age 10 through
24.
(2) The Census Bureau's data also illustrates that young
people are the fastest growing segment of the population in
developing countries.
(3) Even though most countries do have birth registration
laws, four out of ten babies born in 2012 were not registered
worldwide. Moreover, an estimated 36 percent of children
under the age of five worldwide (about 230,000,000 children)
do not possess a birth certificate.
(4) A nationally recognized proof of birth system is
important to determining a child's citizenship, nationality,
place of birth, parentage, and age. Without such a system, a
passport, driver's license, or other identification card is
difficult to obtain. The lack of such documentation can
prevent girls and women from officially participating in and
benefitting from the formal economic, legal, and political
sectors in their countries.
(5) The lack of birth registration among girls worldwide is
particularly concerning as it can exacerbate the
disproportionate vulnerability of women to trafficking, child
marriage, and lack of access to health and education
services.
(6) A lack of birth registration among women and girls can
also aggravate what, in many places, amounts to an already
reduced ability to seek employment, participate in civil
society, or purchase or inherit land and other assets.
(7) Girls undertake much of the domestic labor needed for
poor families to survive: carrying water, harvesting crops,
tending livestock, caring for younger children, and doing
chores.
(8) Accurate assessments of access to education, poverty
levels, and overall census activities are hampered by the
lack of official information on women and girls. Without this
rudimentary information, assessments of foreign assistance
and domestic social welfare programs are difficult to gauge.
(9) To help ensure that women and girls are considered in
United States foreign assistance policies and programs, that
their needs are addressed in the design, implementation, and
evaluation of foreign assistance programs, and that women and
girls have the opportunity to succeed, it is important that
girls be counted and have access to birth certificates and
other official documentation.
SEC. 3. STATEMENT OF POLICY.
It is the policy of the United States to--
(1) encourage countries to support the rule of law and
ensure girls and boys of all ages are able to fully
participate in society, including by providing birth
certifications and other official documentation;
(2) enhance training and capacity-building in key
developing countries, local nongovernmental organizations,
and other civil society organizations, including faith-based
organizations and organizations representing children and
families in the design, implementation, and monitoring of
programs under this Act, to effectively address the needs of
birth registries in countries where girls are systematically
undercounted; and
(3) incorporate into the design, implementation, and
evaluation of policies and programs measures to evaluate the
impact that such policies and programs have on girls.
SEC. 4. UNITED STATES ASSISTANCE TO SUPPORT COUNTING OF GIRLS
IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD.
(a) Authorization.--The Secretary and the Administrator are
authorized to prioritize and advance ongoing efforts to--
(1) support programs that will contribute to improved and
sustainable Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems
(CRVS) with a focus on birth registration;
(2) support programs that build the capacity of developing
countries' national and local legal and policy frameworks to
prevent discrimination against girls in gaining access to
birth certificates, particularly where this may help prevent
exploitation, violence, and other abuse; and
(3) support programs and key ministries, including,
interior, youth, and education ministries, to help increase
property rights, social security, home ownership, land tenure
security, inheritance rights, access to education, and
economic and entrepreneurial opportunities, particularly for
women and girls.
(b) Coordination With Multilateral Organizations.--The
Secretary and the Administrator are authorized to coordinate
with the World Bank, relevant United Nations agencies and
programs, and other relevant organizations to encourage and
work with countries to enact, implement, and enforce laws
that specifically collect data on girls and establish
registration programs to ensure girls are appropriately
counted and have the opportunity to be active participants in
the social, legal, and political sectors of society in their
countries.
(c) Coordination With Private Sector and Civil Society
Organizations.--The Secretary and the Administrator are
authorized to work with the United States, international, and
local private sector and civil society organizations to
advocate for the registration and documentation of all girls
and boys in developing countries, in order to help prevent
exploitation, violence, and other abuses and to help provide
economic and social opportunities.
SEC. 5. REPORT.
The Secretary and the Administrator shall include in
relevant evaluations and reports to Congress the following
information:
(1) To the extent practicable, a breakdown of United States
foreign assistance beneficiaries by age, gender, marital
status, location, and school enrollment status.
(2) A description, as appropriate, of how United States
foreign assistance benefits girls.
(3) Specific information, as appropriate, on programs that
address the particular needs of girls.
SEC. 6. DEFINITIONS.
In this Act:
(1) Administrator.--The term ``Administrator'' means the
Administrator of the United States Agency for International
Development.
(2) Foreign assistance.--The term ``foreign assistance''
has the meaning given the term in section 634(b) of the
Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2394(b)).
(3) Secretary.--The term ``Secretary'' means the Secretary
of State.
SEC. 7. SUNSET.
This Act shall expire on the date that is five years after
the date of the enactment of this Act.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from
Ohio (Mr. Chabot) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel) each will
control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio.
General Leave
Mr. CHABOT. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members
may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to
include extraneous material on this bill.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Ohio?
There was no objection.
Mr. CHABOT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I rise today in support of S. 802, the Girls Count Act of 2015. It is
identical to H.R. 2100, the House version of the bill, which my staff
has worked on for 3 years now.
I want to thank Senator Marco Rubio and his staff for moving this
bill through the Senate so we can soon get this important piece of
legislation to the President's desk.
Madam Speaker, the Girls Count Act of 2015 is an important measure
because what many people don't realize is that approximately 51 million
children around the world are not registered at their births. That is
one-third of all children under the age of 5 worldwide.
What does this mean? It means that these children lack a birth
certificate, preventing them, oftentimes, from having access to
fundamental rights which we here in the United States take for granted.
It means they have no proof of their ages, parentage, or even of their
citizenship. They are essentially nonpeople, oftentimes, in the eyes of
the law.
For girls in particular, the lack of a birth registration certificate
increases their vulnerability to trafficking and exploitation. These
girls grow up facing high barriers to work, education, and political
participation. Tragically, too often, these girls are treated in their
own countries as if they really don't exist, as if they really don't
count at all.
All of this is happening in places where we need women and girls to
actively shape their countries' futures because, indeed, women serve as
the backbone of stable, healthy societies all around the world. They
are breadwinners and caregivers and peacemakers and the educators of
the next generation.
For these reasons, I introduced and authored the Girls Count Act to
direct the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International
Development to support efforts aimed at improving birth registry-birth
certificate programs in developing countries and others.
This step, which actually seems quite simple, will ensure that every
child gets access to voting rights, land tenure rights, health
services, and an education. Critically, Girls Count authorizes the
State Department and USAID to support programs to protect girls' legal
rights, particularly economic and property rights, and to build legal
and policy frameworks to prevent discrimination against women and
girls.
Your support of the Girls Count Act of 2015--those who have supported
this legislation--will not only help to prevent human and sex
trafficking in developing countries by aiding in identifying displaced
persons and international adoption cases, but it will
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give girls and women around the world access to the fundamental rights
that they so rightly deserve.
I want to thank Congresswoman McCollum and Congressmen Smith and
Sherman for their support in introducing this legislation in the House,
as well as to thank the 44 other bipartisan Members--this is a
Republican and a Democratic bill--who have given their support.
I also want to thank my colleagues in the Senate, especially Senator
Marco Rubio, for backing this legislation.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. ENGEL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I rise in strong support of S. 802, the Girls Count Act of 2015.
I want to thank Representatives Chabot and McCollum for introducing
the House companion to this bill.
Madam Speaker, around the world, over a third of children under the
age of 5 have no registration of their births. Most of these children
are girls.
I remember my grandmother--my mother's mother--who came to this
country before World War I from Eastern Europe. She didn't have a
certificate and didn't really know for sure what year she was born or
what time she was born.
She knew it was December--she thought it was December--but she didn't
have it, I remember. Here we are now, many, many years later, and we
have the same problem in many areas around the world.
Not existing on paper can shatter a person's life. With official
documentation comes certain protections, and without those protections
a person becomes an easy target for child labor, human trafficking, and
child marriage. Down the line, many of these children will be unable to
inherit land or money, to start a business, or even to open a bank
account.
This sort of marginalization often hits women the hardest.
Unregistered women are more likely to be confined to their homes and to
be invisible to the outside world. They enjoy only limited choices and
opportunities, and their marginalization drags down the prosperity of
their communities.
Birth registration has most recently become an acute problem in
Syria. The ongoing civil war has caused countless internally displaced
and refugee children to go unregistered. As a result, these children
face a high risk of entering into early or illegal marriages, of being
sex trafficked, of being forced into child labor, or of being recruited
by terrorist groups.
S. 802 will ramp up efforts to get more children registered around
the world. It authorizes the State Department and USAID to work with
local governments to ensure equal access to registration programs. It
uses existing funding to more effectively address this increasingly
serious problem.
This bill would complement the work of organizations around the world
engaged in the important work of protecting vulnerable children, and it
would put pressure on other governments to act.
While improving birth registration systems helps the most vulnerable
populations, it has positive ripple effects across a society.
Governments with better records can provide better services, tailor
more effective policies, and bring more people into full participation
in their economies. This basic practice can help make entire countries
stronger.
Getting children registered at birth helps get them off to a good
start, and this bill will help make that happen. Madam Speaker, I urge
my colleagues to support this important legislation.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. CHABOT. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. ENGEL. Madam Speaker, it is now my great pleasure to yield 2
minutes to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum), one of the
coauthors of this bill and someone who has worked endlessly to make
sure this bill passes.
Ms. McCOLLUM. Madam Speaker, today, I rise to support the Girls Count
Act.
I want to thank Mr. Chabot and his staff for working alongside my
office on this important bill. I want to thank Mr. Royce and, of
course, Mr. Engel for their support in moving this bill forward.
Madam Speaker, we can all agree that every child deserves to have his
birth, name, and identity recognized by his government. Every child
deserves access to an education and to health services. Without a
recognized identity, that is just not possible. Unfortunately, UNICEF
estimates that 230 million children under the age of 5--and that is
mostly girls--do not have birth certificates.
Without this piece of paper, they are effectively invisible to their
governments, invisible to the world. These invisible girls are likely
not to be able to attend school or to access the needed health
services. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for a girl to
inherit, to vote, or to simply be a full and active member of her
community.
This girl would be at high risk of being confined to her home, of
being forced into early marriage, or of being sold into human
trafficking. Without a birth certificate, she will likely face a bleak
future. None of us would want this for her.
The Girls Count Act is exactly what the title says; it helps ensure
that all girls and boys are counted by their governments. The bill
helps support the efforts of the Secretary of State and the
Administrator of USAID to work with international organizations and
NGOs to improve birth registration for all children. Every child
deserves to have his birth recognized, and it deserves to be recognized
by his government.
I urge my colleagues to support this bill.
Mr. CHABOT. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time and my
right to close.
Mr. ENGEL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to
close.
Once again, let me say that getting children registered at birth
helps get them off to a good start. This bill encourages governments to
enact laws and policies that give all children, including girls, a
chance at being full participants in society. I strongly support this
bill, and I urge my colleagues to do so as well.
I want to again compliment Ms. McCollum and Mr. Chabot for their hard
work on this very important piece of legislation. This should be a
unanimous ``yes.'' I urge my colleagues to support this bill.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. CHABOT. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I would like to thank Congresswoman McCollum and also the ranking
member, Mr. Engel, for their leadership on this issue. Both of them
have been very important parts of seeing this through the House. It
went through the other body recently as well, so it is working its way
to the President's desk, and we are very encouraged by that.
Madam Speaker, many of us are deeply concerned by the appalling acts
of injustice that are committed against women and girls around the
world on a daily basis. The headlines are, oftentimes, hard to
believe--acid attacks in Iran, death at the hands of a savage mob in
Afghanistan, the kidnapping of schoolgirls in Nigeria--yet the
disenfranchisement of women and girls around the world is not just an
humanitarian issue; it is a development issue, and it is a security
issue as well.
How can a nation thrive when half of its citizens are oftentimes
denied their most basic human rights? The Girls Count Act--this act,
the one that we are talking about this evening--recognizes the
suffering and aims to empower those who have been cast into the shadows
of their societies.
Birth registration is one of the first steps in the fight to preserve
an individual's basic rights under the law in that particular country.
It is also a critical means to ensuring the full participation of women
and girls in their communities. Whether it is voting or owning property
or employment or health care or a whole range of things. Let's help
girls count.
Again, I want to thank the House for supporting the passage of this
measure. This will be the second year now--2 years in a row--that this
House, I believe, will support it, and I encourage all of my colleagues
to support it.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Mrs. LAWRENCE. Madam Speaker, as we pass the bipartisan Girls Count
Act of 2015, I'd like to emphasize the importance of advancing women's
rights around the world. In 2015, it is completely unacceptable that
women still do not posses the same rights as men.
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My grandmother raised her family and put food on the table to ensure
that her children and grandchildren received the education and care
they deserved. I am incredibly proud of my grandmother and all women
like her who are the rocks of their families. I am fighting for women's
rights because it is each generation's obligation's to ensure that the
next generation is better off than the previous. I fight for my
daughter and granddaughter, who I hope will one day live in a world
where there is true gender equality.
In a time where women should be equal to men, there are unspeakable
atrocities being committed all over the world. For example, Boko Haram
kidnapped over 300 school girls, drawing the ire of global activists.
By passing this legislation, we will become leaders in the worldwide
fight against misogyny. This bill requires countries around the world
to develop civil registration and statistical programs to better trace
women's information. In addition, it prevents governments from
discriminating against women, while creating a policy framework to
improve access to economic and property ownership. I sincerely hope
that governments draft strong legislation that changes the current
policy.
I am grateful that our chamber has taken this important step to
ensure that countries around the world recognize the need to improve
women's access to basic rights. I want to thank my colleagues on both
sides of the aisle for supporting women's rights.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by
thanking my good friend and colleague Congressman Steve Chabot for his
leadership and hard work in shepherding the Girls Count Act as it makes
its way to the President's desk. It is important legislation that will
make an impact in the lives of so many girls and young women around the
world.
Like last year, I am an original co-sponsor of the House version of
the Girls Count Act, and I think that the version introduced in both
Houses this Congress is even better than the one that the House passed
last year, as it explicitly recognizes the great work that so many
faith-based organizations do around the globe.
There is a need for the legislation, because in too many parts of the
world, girls are discriminated against simply for being a girl. Indeed,
this disregard for the value of the girl child often begins in the
womb, in countries such as India and China, where we see the horrific
practice of sex-selective abortion. This cruel practice in turn has led
to a gender imbalance which has fed other crimes against women, such as
sex trafficking, bride selling and prostitution.
I chaired a hearing two years ago on the problem of ``India's Missing
Girls,'' which addressed the problem of violence against the girl child
in India. Sex-selective abortion and female infanticide have led to
lopsided sex ratios: in parts of India, for example, 126 boys are born
for every 100 girls. Perhaps the best figures we have concerning the
magnitude of the problem come from India's 2011 census figures, which
find that there are approximately 37 million more men than women in
India.
In China, too, we see the brutal effects of a one-child policy that
causes baby girls to be killed before birth; where only one child per
couple is permitted in a society that has a traditional preference for
sons, the predictable result is that a disproportionate number of girls
will be killed in the womb.
As Mara Hvistendahl recounted in a book I recommend to all of my
colleagues, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the
Consequences of a World Full of Men, in Asia alone, there are 160
million missing girls, roughly the same amount of women and girls as
there are in the United States. The result of this sex-imbalance is a
world where there is greater political instability, with violence
inside the womb begetting violence outside as well.
Today's legislation, which seeks to have every girl counted and
registered, marks a small but important step toward a world where every
child, boy or girl, is equally valued and cherished for her or his
inherent, God-given dignity from the moment of conception.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot) that the House suspend the rules and
pass the bill, S. 802.
The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the
rules were suspended and the bill was passed.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
____________________