The International Day of the Girl Quiz: Seven Questions

October 11 is the International Day of the Girl, the United Nations observance that puts girls' rights, schooling, and safety at the center of the calendar for one day. This year's theme is "End child marriage and invest in girls' rights," chosen with girls and girl-led networks, and UNICEF marked the day with fresh numbers on how many childhoods are still cut short. This Day of the Girl quiz turns those headlines into seven quick questions, with the answer and the reporting behind it under each one.

The rules of this Day of the Girl quiz are simple: read the question, commit to an answer before scrolling, then check the bolded line. If the topic is new to you, the site's earlier coverage makes good warm-up reading: Meghan Markle's dinner with Malala Yousafzai was no ordinary girls' night out, and a UN warning that violence against older women stays invisible shows the fight does not end at eighteen. For the current-events crowd, this Sunday's news quiz covers the weekend's other headlines. A scoring guide waits at the bottom, and the first question of the Day of the Girl quiz goes back to the beginning.

The Day of the Girl quiz questions

1. When was the first International Day of the Girl observed?

Answer: October 11, 2012. The United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 66/170 on December 19, 2011, naming October 11 the observance, and the first celebration arrived the following October, according to National Today. The push came from Plan International's "Because I Am a Girl" campaign, which argued that girls deserved a day of their own on the global calendar.

2. Which country formally proposed the UN resolution?

Answer: Canada. Plan International's team in Canada took the idea to the federal government, which then formally proposed the resolution at the General Assembly, according to National Today. Rona Ambrose, Canada's minister for the status of women at the time, sponsored it, and a delegation of women and girls presented in support of the initiative.

3. What was the theme of that first observance?

Answer: ending child marriage. The inaugural day in 2012 centered on the grave issue of child marriage, according to National Today. Fourteen years later, the theme has come full circle, this time with an investment demand attached.

4. What is this year's theme?

Answer: "End child marriage and invest in girls' rights!" UNESCO says the theme was developed through consultations with girls, girl-led networks, civil society, and UN partners, and it calls for urgent action so every girl can learn, grow, and choose her own future. UNESCO's observance page describes the day as a global moment to celebrate girls and press governments to fund solutions that protect their rights.

5. How many girls are married before adulthood each year?

Answer: more than twelve million, roughly one every three seconds. UNICEF reported ahead of this year's observance that around one in five girls worldwide is married before turning eighteen, with some six hundred fifty million women and girls alive today who were married as children, according to LaPresse's write-up of the agency's figures. Crises, conflict, and displacement keep pushing the numbers up, and sub-Saharan Africa carries the highest regional rate.

6. How much has the global child marriage rate fallen since 2000?

Answer: from twenty-five percent to eighteen percent in 2025. UNESCO's new report shows the share of girls married before eighteen dropping across the past quarter century, although the rate still sits at a quarter in Central and Southern Asia and thirty-one percent in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the agency. The same report notes that gender parity in school enrolment is now achieved globally from pre-primary through upper secondary education, while an estimated six million pregnant and young mothers aged ten to nineteen were out of school in sub-Saharan Africa in 2024. Read UNESCO's full gender gaps report for the breakdown.

7. How many girls and women have undergone female genital mutilation?

Answer: more than two hundred thirty million. That is the count in UNICEF's most current global compilation, with Africa accounting for the largest share at over one hundred forty-four million, Asia following with over eighty million, and six million more in the Middle East, according to UNICEF's FGM statistics page. The agency says the pace of progress to end the practice is lagging far behind population growth.

Scoring guide

Seven out of seven makes you the undisputed Day of the Girl quiz champion. Five or six right means the data in this Day of the Girl quiz actually stuck. Three or four right is an honest result for a busy reader, and anything below that earns a quiet afternoon catching up on the stories above before the next quiz.