Meeting the Development Rights of Adolescent Girls.

• Position: Brief Article

Of the six billion citizens on planet Earth, one billion are teenagers. And 900 million of them are in the developing world.

Assume for a moment that average fertility falls to the replacement ratio of 2 to 1. Even then, the number of women giving birth will be so large that the phenomenon of "population momentum" will account for nearly half of the anticipated population growth in the developing world in the next 100 years.

Research shows that improving the lives of adolescent girls means addressing not only their needs, but also those of their children. Indeed, promoting their development offers high returns to overall economic productivity. But in many parts of the world, there is virtually no broadly conceived strategy of investment in their lives which offers social and economic alternatives and identities other than that of becoming wives and mothers.

A UNICEF-coordinated project, funded for more than $3 million over a year, supports the development or improvement of action plans to meet the needs of adolescent girls in 14 countries--Bangladesh, China, the...