Girls’ rights, fragility, and the future: World Bank Blog By Doreen Kibuka-Musoke and Tim Agaba Baroraho
Bujumbura, Burundi (PANA) - There is reason to have celebrated the International Day of the Girl this month. On average, girls today are better educated, more likely to survive to adulthood, and be free to make decisions about their own lives and bodies than previous generations.
Growing up in a world with cycles of crises and recoveries, the systems they rely on for healthcare, safety, social protection and education are becoming weaker and more fragile.
Fragility stands in the way of progress for gender equality and threatens to reverse hard-won gains for girls. Like crises, fragility increases gender-based violence, as well as heightening risk factors such as child marriage for financial insecurity, being out-of-school or pregnant outside of marriage.
Save the Children’s Global Girlhood Report 2024: Fragile Futures finds that girls in fragile countries are twice as likely to marry during childhood compared to girls living in more stable countries. 32 million girls live in emergency hotspots where they face high risk of child marriage and the challenges associated with fragility
In fragile settings – particularly those grappling with conflict, climate or economic crises – governments face challenges in meeting girls’ protection needs at a time when protective systems are at their weakest. Guidance on how to support girls’ rights in fragile settings is limited as governments in fragile settings often grapple with the transition from humanitarian relief to development response.
That means no single organisation can act alone to help countries advance girls’ rights. Partnerships are critical for achieving meaningful impact.
Save the Children is working with partners, especially the World Bank to help girls and their communities in fragile countries. In these settings, the World Bank aligns its new Gender Strategy with its Fragility, Conflict and Violence (FCV) Strategy — using gender initiatives to address gender inequalities and tackle the root causes of fragility and conflict.
Save the Children and the World Bank are making a difference together for girls in fragile countries, for example through flexible cash transfers which combat inequality as well as efforts to end child marriage. In Burundi, for example, cash transfer programmes are targeting women and promoting investments in maternal health and nutrition services and girls’ education.
Gender inequality is a critical indicator of how well a country, or a community is prepared to respond to a crisis. In 2022, the Bank launched the #AccelerateEquality initiative, which assesses progress and lessons learned over the past decade in addressing gender inequalities and empowering women and girls.
The World Bank Group is drawing on insights from this initiative to inform its new (2024–2030) Gender Strategy. The Gender Strategy aims to create more and better jobs, including jobs of the future, engage women and girls as leaders, and close gender gaps in Science, Technology, English, and Maths (STEM) fields.
The recent World Bank publication, A Development Approach to Advancing Gender Engagement and Addressing Gender Inequalities in Fragile, Conflict-Affected and Violent Situations emphasises the importance of a recovery that is inclusive of women and girls—in terms of both their participation in the process and their benefiting from renewed access to jobs and services.
In forced displacement contexts, the approach paper emphasizes empowering displaced affected women and girls to ensure their economic and social inclusion.
Engaging men and boys as promoters and beneficiaries is essential for effective programming. This is required to explicitly change norms, shift opportunities, and build resources and agency for women and girls.
The World Bank’s Ethiopia (3Rs) project, Recovery-Response-Resilience for conflict-affected communities engage in accelerated community mobilisation and sensitisation activities for behaviour change through men and boys’ engagement, as well as engagement with community leaders, religious leaders, youth groups, and women’s groups.
The World Bank’s Liberian Women Empowerment Project is helping to improve social and livelihood services for women and girls in targeted communities, foster positive social norms, and strengthen the government’s capacity to advance women and girls’ empowerment. The project shows how women and girls have proven key to community resilience in fragile situations through capacity building of resilient livelihoods groups and supporting grants for women-led livelihoods.
All are important steps by the international community toward growing a much-needed evidence base to mobilise action, helping fragile countries integrate a focus of gender equality in their development programmes.
On the occasion of the International Day of the Girl, a few weeks ago, Girls not Brides and Plan joined Save the Children to make urgent calls for action to build new coalitions for collaboration and coordinated investment in gender equality.
The theme for #DayoftheGirl this year, “Girls’ Vision for the Future” recognises girls as powerful agents for change. The experiences of this generation of girls, as survivors of multiple, complex, and interconnected crises make them experts in the challenges that fragility presents and crucial partners for building a safer, more equal future for every girl and her community.
-0- PANA AR 28Oct2024
