girls’ opportunities for learning will be limited as a result of temporary school closures.198 This can occur for several interrelated reasons, including that households prioritize boys’ education, that girls are required to take on additional domestic and care responsibilities, or that girls cannot access home-school materials when mobile phones or laptops with Internet capacity are shared within the family (between working adults and children). A further negative consequence is that girls will not return to school at all. Past epidemics have shown that, when schools are closed for long periods of time, girls are less likely to return after emergency measures have been lifted; girls are often removed from school during emergencies, even when schools remain open,199 denying them the right to education and also limiting their right to decent employment in the future. • When girls are out of school and subjected to lockdown conditions, their vulnerability to potential human rights violations is heightened. For instance, risks of early and forced marriage, adolescent pregnancy, gender-based violence and, possibly, female genital mutilation increase,200 in part because there is less oversight and safeguarding of girls’ well-being outside the household (from teachers, medical professionals, law enforcement agencies, peers, etc.). The practice of early (child) marriage in a number of OSCE participating States, as well as within specific groups, pre-dates the coronavirus outbreak.201 Early marriage and early childbearing are common reasons that girls drop out of school. But the prolonged absence of girls from school due to emergency measures (related also to the suspension of civil registration processes, discussed in a preceding section of this publication) may well have hastened girls’ early marriage, especially if families believe that girls will not return to school or due to financial pressures. Not only are girls at greater risk for sexual and gender-based violence perpetrated by family members during lockdown conditions, but online child sexual abuse and exploitation (such as sexual coercion and grooming) has increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a direct result of both more sex 198 Center for Global Development, “Gendered Impacts of COVID-19 School Closures: Insights from Frontline Organizations”, May 2020, <https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/gendered-impacts-covid-19-school-closures-insights-frontline-organizations.pdf>. 199 OHCHR, ��COVID-19 and Women’s Human Rights: Guidance”, 15 April 2020, <https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/ Issues/Women/COVID-19_and_Womens_Human_Rights.pdf>. 200 UNESCO, “Addressing the Gender Dimensions of School Closures”, 2020, p. 2, <https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ ark:/48223/pf0000373379/>; and UNFPA/UNICEF, “COVID-19 Disrupting SDG 5.3: Eliminating Female Genital Mutilation, Technical Note”, April 2020, <https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/resource-pdf/COVID-19_ Disrupting_SDG.3_Eliminating_Female_Genital_Mutilation.pdf>. 201 Countries with the highest levels of child marriage (of girls), for which data is available, are Albania, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Romania and Turkey. Child marriage rates are also high among the Roma and Sinti population, among refugees and in conflict-affected areas. See: Economic Commission for Europe, Beijing+25 Regional Review Meeting, “Eliminating All Forms of Discrimination against the Girl Child”, op. cit., note 218, para. 24. Child marriage has also been observed in Albania and Kazakhstan, as in minority communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. See: UN Women Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia, “Regional Assessment of Implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in Europe and Central Asia”, 2019, p. 35, <https://www2.unwomen. org/-/media/field%20office%20eca/attachments/publications/2020/03/b25%20assessment%20report. pdf?la=en&vs=5437>. Child marriages have also been documented in countries of the European Union. See: FRA, Addressing Forced Marriage in the EU: Legal Provisions and Promising Practices, (Vienna: FRA 2014) <https://fra. europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra-2014-forced-marriage-eu_en.pdf.pdf>. 58