"Child Marriages, Teenage Pregnancies, School Dropouts - Pandemic Affected Girls Most": UN Envoy

At the age of 30, Ms Wickramanayake is the youngest member of the current UN Secretary General's Cabinet and the first female Youth Envoy.

The global Covid pandemic has seen a rise child marriages, teenage pregnancies, and gender-based violence, with young girls facing the worst of the conditions, a UN envoy said today.

The medical crisis has also reversed years of progress made on the girls' education front, Jayathma Wickramanayake, the UN Secretary-General's Envoy on Youth, said.

"During the pandemic, 6.1 billion people lacked access to the internet and, even now, 300 million people across the globe don't have access to online learning. For several parts of the world, it is a luxury," Ms Wickramanayake said.

"Two years into the pandemic, we have still not found a way to reintegrate these people. The biggest fear is about how it has impacted the lives of young girls. The number of child marriages and teenage pregnancies have increased. Gender-based violence has shot up," she told a group of journalists from around the world during a virtual address.