UK launches new global Women and Girls Strategy on International Women’s Day
Women and girls will be at heart of UK's international work as Foreign Secretary launches new strategy to tackle gender inequality around the world.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly visiting a secondary school in Bo, Sierra Leone, the town where his mother was born.
-
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly launches new Women and Girls Strategy during a visit to his mother’s hometown in Sierra Leone
-
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 Foreign Secretary also announces a new emphasis on supporting grassroots women’s rights organisations, and funding for a Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights programme that will support an estimated 10 million women
Women and girls will be put at the heart of the UK’s international work, with a new strategy that will tackle gender inequality across the globe.
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 combatting attempts to roll back women’s rights, and work with partners around the world to do the same. For the first time, this strategy commits the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to more than 80% of its bilateral aid programmes including a focus on gender equality by 2030.
Progress towards gender equality is increasingly under threat. Climate change and humanitarian crises continue to disproportionately affect women and girls, there are attempts to row back on women’s rights including in countries like Iran and Afghanistan, sexual violence is happening in conflicts in Ukraine and elsewhere and violence against women is growing online.
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.
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 programme, 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 programme 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 organisations and movements, recognising their critical role in advancing gender equality and protecting rights, and amplifying grassroots women’s and girls’ voices. Most of this £38 million programme 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 organisations 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.
Background
-
this is the first international Women and Girls Strategy that brings together all the UK’s development and diplomacy work. The Department for International Development (DFID) produced a Strategic Vision for Gender Equality in 2018. This new strategy is broader, reflecting all the work of the merged Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
-
the FCDO Women and Girls Strategy commits that at least 80% of FCDO bilateral Official Development Assistance (ODA) programmes targets gender equality as a policy objective by 2030. We will use the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) gender equality policy marker to track this
-
we are announcing up to £200 million towards the WISH (Women’s Integrated Sexual Health) Dividend Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights programme, focussed on sub-Saharan Africa
-
a new £38 million programme will support women’s rights organisations (WROs) and movements around the world. £33 million of this funding is for a new partnership with the Equality Fund. Up to £5 million is going to a consortium led by Gender Links, a South African-based women’s rights organisation
Media enquiries
Email newsdesk@fcdo.gov.uk
Telephone 020 7008 3100
Contact the FCDO Communication Team via email (monitored 24 hours a day) in the first instance, and we will respond as soon as possible.