Ewelina Ochab on the International Day of the Girl Child:
Baroness Sugg, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, has provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (HL8495):
Question by Lord Alton of Liverpool:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government (1) how many, and (2) which, of the commitments made at the Girl Summit 2014 have been met; and (a) what progress has been made, and (b) which countries they have engaged with, to seek to end child, early and forced marriage. (HL8495)
Tabled on: 28 September 2020
Answer:
Baroness Sugg:
Since the Girl Summit the UK has remained at the forefront of global efforts to eliminate Child, Early and Forced Marriage (CEFM) and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). The UK galvanised international agreement on Sustainable Development Goal Target 5.3 on eliminating harmful practices including CEFM and FGM, by 2030. This has created an international mechanism for tracking global progress.
The UK invested at least £39 million in UN and civil society programmes to end child marriage between 2015 and 2020 and also tackles child marriage through programmes to promote gender equality and girls’ education. We have continued to engage and support partner countries in efforts to end CEFM. For example, 11 countries in Africa and South Asia have developed National Action Plans to end child marriage, with support from UK Aid through the UNICEF-UNFPA Global Programme to End Child Marriage. These actions have contributed to a 15% reduction of global prevalence of child marriage over the last decade, averting 25 million child marriages.
The UK’s dedicated Forced Marriage Unit continues to lead efforts to combat forced marriage in the UK and provides dedicated support to victims and those at-risk. Since 2008, 2,605 Forced Marriage Protection Orders were issued related to marriages undertaken or planning in the UK and overseas.
The UK continues to lead the world in our support to the Africa-led movement to end FGM. Since 2013, £57.5 million has been invested in programmes to end FGM, which have helped Gambia, Nigeria, Mauritania and Sudan to make the practice illegal, and Burkina Faso, Egypt, and Uganda to strengthen their laws, as well as building “The Girl Generation” which has reached over 200 million people across Africa.
Date and time of answer: 09 Oct 2020 at 13:55.
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Baroness Sugg, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, has provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (HL8496):
Question by Lord Alton of Liverpool: :
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what activities they have planned, if any, to revitalise the commitments made at the Girl Summit 2014, and in particular the commitment to end child, early and forced marriage. (HL8496)
Tabled on: 28 September 2020
Answer:
Baroness Sugg:
The UK is a global leader in efforts to eliminate Child, Early and Forced Marriage (CEFM) and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Ending child marriage will remain a key focus, including as part of our work to deliver the Prime Minister’s commitment to champion 12 years of quality education for girls. As the UK’s Special Envoy on Girls’ Education, I will continue to promote the need for progress on a wider range of issues that hold girls back from accessing a quality education and achieving their potential. This must include global efforts to end child marriage and all forms of violence against girls and women. The UK will use our leadership of the new Global Action Coalition on Gender Based Violence to tackle violence against girls in all its forms. And we will continue to lead the world in our support to the Africa-led movement to end FGM. In 2018 we announced a further £50 million for efforts to end FGM up to 2025.
Date and time of answer: 09 Oct 2020 at 13:51.
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Baroness Sugg, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, has provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (HL8499):
Question by Lord Alton of Liverpool: :
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report by CRIED, Invisible Targets of Hatred: Socioeconomically Excluded Women from Religious Minority Backgrounds, published on 10 September; and how the findings of this research will be reflected in (1) the UK’s dialogue with, and (2) UK Aid programmes in, countries where the ideologically motivated sexual abuse of women and girls from religious minority backgrounds occurs. (HL8499)
Tabled on: 28 September 2020
Answer:
Baroness Sugg:
As reflected in the CREID report, the UK agrees that we must address the multiple, intersecting forms of violence that women and girls experience in their daily lives.
The UK has contributed over £20 million to the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women, which provides grants to women’s rights organisations and other grassroots organisations to support innovative approaches to ending violence against women. This includes projects such as the Free Yezidi Foundation Women’s Center, which works in an internally displaced persons camp in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, providing services to survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. It is now more important than ever to scale-up effective approaches to tackle all forms of violence against women and girls, including ideologically motivated violence.
To respond to the urgent need to scale up violence against women and girls prevention, we are investing £67.5 million in a successor programme to the UK’s What Works programme – What Works to Prevent Violence: Impact at Scale. This will be the first global effort to systematically scale-up of violence prevention efforts, and pioneer new scalable approaches to tackle violence against the most marginalised women and girls who face multiple forms of discrimination. It is the largest investment by any single donor government to prevent violence against women and girls globally.
Date and time of answer: 09 Oct 2020 at 13:50.
