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younger siblings. According to the UN Foundation’s GirlUp, only 26 percent of indigenous Guatemalan girls remain in school until age seventeen. Girls with limited education face highly limited opportunities in life, often being forced to marry at an early age with no prospects for ways to earn a living. Indeed, GirlUp also reports that 40 percent of Mayan girls under the age of eighteen are married. These sorts of problems are common for children around the world. The rights of health, safety, and education are among the rights of children declared by the United Nations. They are rights the United Nations says everyone in the world should have—so we call them“human rights.”

Mayan women and girls in traditional dress at a market in Chichicastenango, Guatemala. Young Mayans in Guatemala are not the only girls in the world to face lack of educational opportunity: in all regions the educational gap between boys and girls is a pressing problem.

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The United Nations