Updates

By: The GEMS Team;  GEMS was a winner of the Women Deliver 50

GEMS’ Youth Leadership program delivers solutions for commercially sexually exploited and domestically trafficked (CSE) girls and young women, equipping them to reach their full potential. Since its inception in 2003, the program has succeeded in empowering generations of youth survivors of the commercial sex industry to become leaders and advocates to end the commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking. Read more...

By: Elise Braunschweig; Grassroot Soccer is a winner of the Women Deliver 50

South Africa is enduring one of the world‘s most severe HIV epidemics with an adult prevalence rate of 16.9%. Research shows that three inter-related risk factors—harmful gender norms and gender-based violence, multiple partners, and age-disparate sex—are driving the epidemic and that HIV is disproportionately concentrated among women and girls. Read more...

By: Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund; Originally posted on Huffington Post

As the father of four daughters and as the Executive Director for UNFPA, a leading UN agency working on maternal health, it warms my heart to see that safe motherhood and women's reproductive health are finally being recognized as important development issues.

Sadly, millions of women in developing countries still lack even the most basic care during pregnancy and too often have no one to assist during births. As a result, 1,000 women die every day from complications in pregnancy or childbirth, and countless others suffer debilitating injuries, such as obstetric fistula. Moreover, 215 million women still lack access to modern contraceptives and are, therefore, unable to make fundamental decisions about whether or when to become pregnant. Read more...

By: Laura Dickinson, Communications Officer, Girls Not Brides; The Partnership to End Child Marriage is a winner of the Women Deliver 50

“Child brides are some of the world’s most isolated people. We are delighted that the work of Girls Not Brides and its members to give these girls a voice and to empower those vulnerable to child marriage has been recognised by Women Deliver,” said Marianna Brungs, Coordinator of Girls Not Brides, as the new global partnership to end child marriage was recognised as one of the “most inspiring ideas and solutions delivering for girls and women.” Read more...

By: Jennifer Catino and Alejandra Colom, Population Council; Abriendo Oportunidades (“Opening Opportunities”) is a winner of the Women Deliver 50

Claudia*, a Mayan girl visiting from her village home in El Cerro Grande, arrived at a Guatemala City hospital with severe abdominal pains. After a brief medical exam she was released by the doctor, who found nothing wrong with her.

Claudia belongs to Guatemala’s most disadvantaged group: indigenous young females. Girls like her typically live in isolated rural communities with limited access to basic services like water, sanitation, passable roads, schooling, and health care. Their lives are marked by early marriage, frequent childbearing, social isolation, violence, and chronic poverty. Often they are disregarded by more affluent Guatemalans, like the doctor who examined her. Read more... 

By: Rati Bishnoi, Women Deliver

Despite being outlawed for more than 100 years, nearly one-half (43 percent) of girls in India are married before the minimum legal marriage age of 18 years.

This is changing. But at a pace that’s too slow.

Child marriage is a gross violation of the rights of girls and boys. It denies the basic rights to health; nutrition; education; a life free of violence, abuse, and exploitation; and deprives children of their childhood. While child marriage affects boys as well, it impacts a greater proportion of girls and does so more severely. Read more...

By: Madeline Taskier, Strategic Partnerships Associate at Women Deliver

In Egypt, young girls living in rural areas often do not have the opportunity to attend school. Instead, they help their families and are socially isolated due to conservative gender norms. They often marry young and have little access to public life, as they are confined to the home to raise children and take care of their households. These girls have little access to health care, education, or peers in their communities. To break the cycle of this isolation and enable these girls to reach their full potential, the Population Council launched Ishraq  (meaning “sunrise” in Arabic) in 2001. The program brings adolescent girls from Upper Egypt together in youth centers and provides training to improve their educational, health, and social opportunities. Read more...

By: Madeline Taskier, Strategic Partnerships Associate, Women Deliver
 
When Kakenya Ntaiya was 5 years old, she was engaged to be married. Growing up in Enoosaen, a rural Maasi village in southwestern Kenya, she helped her mother tend the farm and cattle, take care of her siblings, and gather water from the river. She rarely had the chance to attend school; only when her chores were completed.

In her village, like many others in Kenya, girls are expected to undergo female genital cutting (FGC), a coming-of-age ritual signifying womanhood at the age of puberty. After the ceremony has concluded, she is deemed ready for marriage. But Kakenya did not want to be married yet. She had dreams of going through primary and secondary school, going to college and becoming a teacher. Read more...

By: Mariko Rasmussen, public health student at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in Reproductive and Family Health.

Get Involved: Add Your Own Perspectives At The Conversations For A Better World Blog Series

They say kids in Los Angeles grow up fast. Sitting across from a girlfriend over lunch the summer after my sophomore year of high school, I learned there could be truth in this statement. Following a pause in our conversation, she admitted her real reason for calling to see me – she’d had an abortion a few weeks prior. I sat in disbelief. We were fifteen. Read more...

By: Madeline Taskier, Strategic Partnerships Associate at Women Deliver

In India, boys continue to be preferred over girls, permeating gender norms and attitudes throughout the country. Boys carry on the family name, don’t require expensive dowries for marriage, and have more opportunities in education and the workplace. In 2011, 914 girls were born to every 1,000 boys, and gender inequalities are only increasing. Read more...

Today is the culmination of the International Year of Youth: Dialogue and Mutual Understanding, which began on 12 August 2010. There are 1.8 billion young people in the world today, who make up 1/3rd of the world’s population. We hope that although the International Year of Youth has come to a close, momentum and progress for youth involvement and focus in development will not be lost. Read more...

By: Rati Bishnoi, Special Projects Intern at Women Deliver

The Kenyan finance ministry this month announced plans to allocate $3.4 million in the current fiscal budget to provide free sanitary pads to school girls in an effort to remove a major barrier to education in the east African nation. Read more...

By: Mariko Rasmussen, Communications Specialist at Women Deliver

In Bihar, one of India’s least developed and most populous states, men and women seeking information on contraceptives have faced barriers of all kinds: cultural, financial and socio-economic. The need for action is apparent: 58 percent of the population is under age 25, the median age of marriage for women from traditional villages is 15, and 28 percent of women give birth to their first child before the age of 18. In response, Pathfinder’s Promoting Change in Reproductive Behavior (PRACHAR) Project has been working since 2001 to transform attitudes and behaviors around contraceptive use and demand, with the aim of delaying and spacing pregnancies among adolescents and newlywed couples. Read more...