* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Foreign Secretary must seize the opportunity to make progress with initiatives that can help ensure girls everywhere get an education
The ‘universal Swiss army knife’ of girls’ education – as British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson calls it – is perhaps the closest we can get to a ‘silver bullet’ in development. The Foreign Secretary is right to be passionate about this issue, given how the evidence supports the case to invest in this area. As he hosts leaders from across the Commonwealth at his reception this evening, he will rightly use the opportunity to promote the importance of girl’s education with his guests.
There are more than 130 million girls out of school around the world. Beyond that there are millions more in school but not learning, due to lack of teachers or proper resources. This scale of the problem is staggering, and its consequences long-lasting.
Yet, as Johnson has pointed out, when girls are invested in, it helps everyone – the benefits are myriad, and not just for the girls themselves but for their communities and families too. Just think, each day, developing countries are missing out on at least $308 million by not educating girls to the same level as boys. Consider that out-of-school girls are three times more likely to be infected with HIV than girls who remain in school. Or that increased gender equality in education can decrease the likelihood of conflict by over a third.
Given these are a few benefits of the catalytic potential of educating girls – his own aim is to secure an initiative to ensure every girl receives 12 years of decent education – this isn’t just a moral case, but a pragmatic one too.
For the Foreign Secretary’s passion to have a tangible impact, he must seek to bring around change at opportune moments. The biggest of these will be the Canadian G7 in Charlevoix this June. The first thing Johnson must do is persuade his Canadian counterparts to really back their feminist rhetoric with sufficient funding, and deliver tangible initiatives. This effort will take more than one go, so he must also create momentum, starting at tonight’s reception and building towards next week’s G7 Foreign Minister’s meeting.
Johnson would do well to remind his Canadian colleagues of their ‘Feminist Foreign Policy’, and that their G7 would be the apt moment to launch a bold new initiative that boosts women’s economic empowerment. Any such step must focus on girl’s education and skills training, as part of a broader package of policies that includes financial inclusion, land-rights and market access also. This package could help to economically empower 100 million women – so long as it’s well funded, transparent and done in collaboration with others. The UK should also support any such initiative and work together with Canada to make it a reality.
The G7 is not the only avenue open to the Foreign Secretary to bring around the change he seeks. The Sahel Alliance – a group of countries, led by French President Macron and including the UK, which are focusing on the Sahel region (the region of Africa just below the Sahara) is another. Johnson – along with the UK government - must continue to champion gender, and in particular girls’ education, in this forum, pushing this priority in a region containing most of the worst countries on earth for educating girls.
If Global Britain is to be more than a slogan then it needs hard, tangible effects that not only are clearly visible but also embody the values the UK looks to promote. The Foreign Secretary must aim for more than a pleasant reception with warm words and cocktails, but seize the opportunity to make concrete progress with initiatives that can help ensure all girls everywhere get an education. Now that would truly be Global Britain.
Romilly Greenhill is the U.K. director of the One Campaign.
