A/HRC/30/23 contents of education. He recalled that States had an obligation to translate their international obligations into national policies, and emphasized the need for an adequate legal framework as the foundation for the equal right to education. In the area of education, this obligation included temporary special measures and ensuring gender parity and access to education by marginalized communities, including rural communities. Mr. Singh further explained the need for developing strategies that linked literacy programmes and skills development, and expressed concern about the mushrooming of privatization of education, which disadvantaged women. 12. Ms. Godefa focused her intervention on the role of young people, including girls, in the development of education policies. She stated that Governments could ensure that all girls had access to education by making it a State priority and by working with youth groups to give them a voice in education policies. The barriers to girls’ access to education could be both direct and indirect, including, for example, trafficking. To ensure that girls were able to enjoy the right to education on an equal footing with boys, she recommended that States provide stipends and scholarships, and free or subsidized child care for girls with children, as well as income transfer programmes for poor families, so that girls were not removed from schools for economic reasons. She also recommended that schools be constructed locally and closer to communities as a means to increase enrolment and to lower the indirect costs of sending girls to school. She also stressed the importance of awareness-raising by youth groups and States in the domestic and global spheres. 13. Mr. Coulibaly recounted the story of his sister to highlight the multiple barriers to girls’ education, which included the cost of education, the distance to schools, violence in and around schools, harmful gender norms, child marriage and early pregnancy. Such barriers became insurmountable during emergencies and in conflict situations, and were particularly acute for marginalized and excluded populations, particularly girls with disabilities and those belonging to minority groups. He pointed out that emergencies often led to disruptions in education after which many children never returned to school, while those who stayed received poor quality education as a result of an unsafe and inadequate learning environment. For girls, even a short interruption caused by an emergency situation could lead not only to missing out on education but also expose them to the risk of child marriage, trafficking and other forms of gender-based violence. Emergencies could nonetheless offer the opportunity to rebuild more a resilient community or to change norms and behaviours that hindered girls’ education. C. Interventions by representatives of States Members of the Human Rights Council, observer States and other observers 14. In their interventions, States emphasized the importance that they placed on guaranteeing girls’ equal access to education and described specific programmes and policies to overcome obstacles and challenges in this regard. A number of representatives referred to good practices at the national level, including enshrining the right to education in the Constitution and enacting specific laws to guarantee free primary and secondary education. States also referred to measures taken to reduce the distance between schools and homes, investments in infrastructure and special measures such as scholarships, school uniforms and the removal of other education-related costs for children from marginalized communities. A number of States pointed out that women often achieved less in their careers and in the labour market owing to deeply rooted stereotypes in public consciousness, while several expressed their concern about gender stereotypes, including in fields of study reserved for girls. 15. Several speakers expressed their concern that gender parity had not been achieved in education owing to, inter alia, gender and ideological stereotypes, violence and 4