UK launches new global Women and Girls Strategy on International Women's Day
Women and girls will be at the heart of the UK's international work as the British Foreign Secretary launches a new strategy to tackle gender inequality around the world, a statement said.
The Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, launched the new Women and Girls Strategy during a visit to his mother’s hometown in Sierra Leone.
The Strategy aims to “tackle increasing threats to gender equality from climate change, humanitarian crises, conflicts such as the war in Ukraine, and recent attempts to roll back women’s rights, including in countries like Iran and Afghanistan,” the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said in a statement.
The Foreign Secretary also announced a new emphasis on supporting grassroots Women’s Rights Organizations, and funding for a Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights program that will support an estimated 10 million women.
Launching on International Women’s Day, the new strategy will set out how the UK will work to “tackle global gender inequality at every opportunity, including combating attempts to roll back women’s rights, and work with partners around the world to do the same,” the statement said.
For the first time, this strategy commits the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to more than 80% of its bilateral aid programs including a focus on gender equality by 2030.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said: “Advancing gender equality and challenging discrimination is obviously the right thing to do, but it also brings freedom, boosts prosperity and trade, and strengthens security -- it is the fundamental building block of all healthy democracies.”
“Our investment to date has improved lives around the world, with more girls in school, fewer forced into early marriage and more women in top political and leadership roles. But these hard-won gains are now under increasing threat. We’re ramping up our work to tackle the inequalities which remain, at every opportunity,” he added.
The Foreign Secretary will launch the new strategy in Sierra Leone, where he is visiting a school and a hospital in his mother’s hometown of Bo, to see how UK-funded projects are having a positive impact on women and girls.
In the hospital, he will see how UK support is improving blood banks and equipment, increasing electricity access and saving the lives of pregnant women. In the school he will hear about girls’ aspirations for the future. The UK is supporting students there to talk about preventing violence.
The strategy puts a continued focus on educating girls, empowering women and girls, championing their health and rights and ending gender-based violence – the challenges the UK believes are most acute.
It commits the FCDO to involving its entire network of High Commissions and Embassies around the world to deliver the strategy. This will include UK Heads of Mission developing plans and commitments specific to their host country and raising the most pressing issues with their host governments. The UK will also develop an ambitious new research offer to help the UK and its partners make investment decisions.
Alongside the strategy, the Foreign Secretary will announce a new women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights program, focused on sub-Saharan Africa, which has some of the highest rates of child marriage and maternal mortality in the world.
Reaching up to 10.4 million women, the program will receive up to £200 million and is expected to prevent up to 30,600 maternal deaths, 3.4 million unsafe abortions and 9.5 million unintended pregnancies.
Separately, the UK is also increasing support for women’s rights organizations and movements, recognizing their critical role in advancing gender equality and protecting rights, and amplifying grassroots women’s and girls’ voices. Most of this £38 million program will be delivered through a new partnership with the Equality Fund.
Jess Tomlin, co-CEO of the Equality Fund, said: “We’re really excited about this partnership because it shows that every sector can come together -- with boldness and urgency -- to deliver resources to women’s rights organizations everywhere. A just, sustainable, thriving future depends on the solutions of feminist movements, and it’s time for all of us to trust and robustly resource their leadership at scale all across the world.”
Source: Naharnet
| Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved. | https://naharnet.com/stories/en/296097 |