Maternal and Child Health

Amidst controversy over the World Health Organization's breastfeeding resolution, we should move beyond the domestic political question to the global policy matter: does international policy do enough to protect women and their babies even as it promotes the laudable goal of breastfeeding?

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering October 20 to October 27, was compiled with support from Anne Connell and Susannah Dibble.

October 11 is the International Day of the Girl Child. The focus of this year’s internationally recognized day is "EmPOWER girls: Before, during and after crises," aimed at highlighting how conflict and humanitarian emergencies affect girls around the world, particularly the nearly 600 million adolescent girls aged 10 to 19 . Learn more about the status and rights of girls in these six publications from the Women and Foreign Policy program.

Voices from the Field features contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article is authored by Mayesha Alam, a Soros New American Fellow, Yale Law School Global Health Justice Partnership Fellow, and Ph.D. candidate in political science at Yale University.  She is the author of “Women and Transitional Justice: Progress and Persistent Challenges in Retributive and Restorative Processes” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Voices from the Field features contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article is authored by Heather Higginbottom, chief operating officer of CARE USA.

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering July 17 to July 26, was compiled with support from Becky Allen, Anne Connell, and Kathryn Sachs.   

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering July 8 to July 17, was compiled with support from Becky Allen, Anne Connell, and Kathryn Sachs.

As my own spring break approached this past March, I decided to take a couple of my students to this Caribbean destination to explore the impact of Obama-era policies on Cubans. We were surprised by what we learned about the opportunities and challenges facing Cuban women.

Welcome to "Women Around the World: This Week," a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering May 14 to May 19, was compiled with support from Becky Allen and Alyssa Dougherty.  U.S. State Department expands global health restrictions On Monday, the State Department released a guidance document on global health, dramatically expanding Reagan-era restrictions on U.S. aid related to reproductive health to affect all global health programs, including those focused reducing HIV-AIDS, malaria, and maternal and child health. The guidance document – entitled "Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance" – was issued under the auspices of a Presidential Memorandum promulgated at the start of the Trump administration. The guidance will, for the first time, extend restrictions beyond family planning programs to restrict funding to global health assistance furnished by all departments or agencies, explicitly including programs such as the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI). In total, the rule is estimated to restrict almost $9 billion in global health aid, in comparison to around $600 million affected under President George W. Bush. Experts expressed alarm that the new policy would undermine HIV-AIDS prevention efforts—including the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of the virus—as well as programs to combat maternal mortality, among other priorities.  Ugandan peacekeepers accused of sexual exploitation This week, Ugandan peacekeepers tasked with finding warlord Joseph Kony in the Central African Republic (CAR) were accused of rape, sexual exploitation, and sexual slavery of young girls. According to UN records, more than thirty cases of allegations of abuse have been documented, and forty-four women and girls have been impregnated by members of the Ugandan forces. Both the Ugandan military and American Special Operations deny any knowledge of misconduct. Allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation in CAR are not unique to the Ugandan military; years of abuse by peacekeepers from countries including France, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, and Burundi resulted in an independent investigation into the issue in 2015. The resulting report produced a set of recommendations for the UN, including the creation of a Coordination Unit to oversee the UN response to sexual violence, establishment of a trust fund to provide specialized services to victims, and new mechanisms to ensure prosecution.         Pakistan government cracks down on abuse of girls  The Pakistani government has arrested numerous tribal leaders practicing vani – an illegal practice in which a father marries off his daughters to repay debts or settle village feuds. Recent reports from human rights workers, police officers, and regional media cite an increase in cases in rural communities, despite efforts from lawmakers to resolve disputes through government-appointed mediators. Although only twenty-eight cases of vani have been officially reported since January 2016, hundreds of incidents are estimated to occur annually, and some victims of the practice are as young as one year old. Local critics of the government’s crackdown – typically conservative tribal elders – consider vani to be a long-held tradition that prevents bloodshed, rather than a criminal offense that violates girls' human rights. 

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering from March 10 to March 17, was compiled with support from Becky Allen and  Anne Connell. India expands paid leave policy In an effort to increase the country’s female labor force participation rate, the Indian government recently doubled its national maternity leave policy. The new policy—which extends maternity leave from twelve to twenty-six weeks in any workplace with more than ten employees—is now one of the world’s most generous paid leave policies. Prime Minister Modi hailed the new law as a “landmark moment in our efforts towards women-led development.” Others remain skeptical about the effects of the policy, however, noting that it could result in hiring biases by discouraging employers from taking on women of child-bearing age. To counter this possibility, Sushmita Dev, a member of the Indian National Congress, proposed that the government also implement paid paternity leave. Some Indian leaders remain skeptical of the effect that a gender-neutral policy would have: India’s Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi, for example, argued that few men would use the policy in the absence of broader cultural change, given that responsibility for child care continues to fall disproportionately upon women. Turmoil for former South Korean President Former South Korean President Park Geun-hye, impeached in December, was formally removed from office by the Constitutional Court earlier this month. Amid growing public discontent, including clashes between pro-Park supporters and riot police that killed three people this week, many South Koreans are calling for the arrest of the ex-president. Park, the first woman ever elected president in South Korea and the first female president of any northeast Asian nation, became deeply entrenched in a corruption and extortion scandal during the fall of 2016. While she could not be indicted while holding the office of the presidency, she was officially identified as a criminal suspect in the investigation— South Korea’s acting president has since denied an extension for special investigators to continue probing her involvement in the scandal. Park’s impeachment not only has implications for political and economic stability across Asia, but also may affect the future of female political leadership in the region: experts suggest that the scandal and impeachment may influence public opinion about women leaders and raise the level of scrutiny future female candidates will face when running for office. Scotland proposes independence referendum Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced support this week for a Scottish independence referendum, suggesting that she remains determined to hold a national vote within her proposed timeframe, notwithstanding the opposition of British Prime Minister Theresa May. May, who became the UK’s second-ever female head of government in 2016, previously dismissed the possibility of a vote in the next year or two. British officials reportedly fear that a vote on Scottish independence would make it more difficult to broker a favorable Brexit deal with the remaining twenty-seven EU members. Scotland’s public voted by a significant margin to remain in the EU last June, but were outnumbered by British citizens voting to leave the bloc.

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering from February 26 to March 4, was compiled with support from  Anne Connell, Alyssa Dougherty, and Loren Grier. Brussels Summit addresses family planning Last week, the Belgian government hosted an international summit on women’s health in Brussels, during which representatives from fifty countries—including development ministers from Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden—pledged nearly $200 million for women’s sexual and reproductive healthcare services worldwide. Afghanistan, Chad, and Ethiopia were among the developing countries that sent representatives to the conference to present evidence on the relationship between family planning, prosperity, and stability. The summit aimed in part to address the estimated $600 million dollar funding gap left by the Trump administration’s executive order reinstating and expanding the Mexico City policy, which will reduce resources for family planning, and also could jeopardize funding for HIV/AIDS, malaria, and maternal and child health programs. Swedish Minster Isabella Lovin stressed the importance of protecting against global regression on women’s health, noting that “we have seen a decrease in maternal mortality during the last twenty-five years. […] This is progress that we cannot see now reversed.” Legislation on child marriage Bangladesh and Malawi—two countries that consistently rank among the world’s top twenty nations with the highest prevalence of child marriage—both recently passed legislation on this issue.  Malawi’s parliament took a historic step toward ending the harmful practice last week by closing a constitutional loophole that allowed children between the ages of fifteen and eighteen to marry with parental consent. The minimum age of marriage in Malawi will now be eighteen without exception—a significant reform in a country where approximately one out of every two girls is married underage. In Bangladesh, however, parliament approved new legislation to the opposite effect, passing a law on Monday that authorizes underage girls to wed under “some circumstances,” to be determined by local councils and courts. Despite significant declines in the practice since 2000, over half of Bangladeshi women today are married by the time they turn eighteen, and the nation continues to have one of the highest rates of marriage of girls under the age of fifteen. China restricts women’s rights group The social media account for a leading women’s rights organization in China has been suspended from Weibo, a social networking site used by 30 percent of the Chinese public, following allegations that its content violated Chinese law, less than a week after the group re-posted an article authored by leading international women’s rights advocates about the reinvigoration of the international women’s movement. The article at issue referenced events and public demonstrations planned in the Unites States and around the world to mark International Women’s Day on March 8.  No such activities are scheduled in China, in part due to the government’s crackdown on political debate and previous demonstrations, which took place shortly before International Women’s Day last year. The group, which intends to use another Weibo account until the ban is lifted, has seen a significant uptick in interest in their efforts as a result of the ban.  

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering from February 20 to February 27, was compiled with support from Becky Allen, Anne Connell, and Alyssa Dougherty. Female vice president named in Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan has selected his wife, Mehriban Aliyeva, as the country’s first vice president, following a 2016 constitutional referendum that created the position and extended his own term. Aliyeva, who has served as the deputy chair of Azerbaijan’s ruling party since 2013, heads the Azerbaijan Culture Foundation and serves as a UNESCO goodwill ambassador. Although the responsibilities of her newly-created role have yet to be defined, the position sets Aliyeva up as the lawful successor to her husband should he be unable to rule. Critics argue that the president’s appointment of his wife undermines the nation’s fledgling electoral processes and promotes dynastic rule, with opposition leader Isa Gambar asserting that “family rule has no place in the 21st century.” The appointment—which comes amidst intra-government cleavages, dropping energy revenues, and allegations of human rights violations against activists and journalists—is seen by many as an attempt to consolidate power within the ruling regime. May addresses violence against women in the UK Last week, British Prime Minister Theresa May urged parliament to ratify the Istanbul Convention, an international legal framework that outlines minimum standards for a country’s response to violence against women and girls. The UK government aided development of the Istanbul Convention and signed the pan-European treaty in 2012, but had never ratified it. Friday’s successful vote for ratification requires the British government to guarantee funding for shelters, crisis centers, helplines, and violence-prevention training and education in schools, which would help to combat rising rates of violent gender-based crimes in England and Scotland. The bill proposing ratification of the convention faced opposition in two previous readings on the floor of the Commons, with an MP staging a 77-minute speech against its adoption. Prime Minister May called ratification of the convention a personal priority and an integral part of a broad nationwide plan to transform the way the UK prevents and addresses violence against women. Women’s political participation in India In India, despite progress in women’s political representation in village councils, female representation in parliament remains low—in part because so few women seek parliamentary office. In populous Uttar Pradesh, for example, fewer than 10 percent of the candidates in last week’s legislative assembly elections were female. Today, Indian women hold only 12 percent of seats in the lower and upper houses of parliament in the world’s largest democracy—a disparity that  some experts link to low historical female voter turnout, among other factors. At the local level, women have made significantly greater gains in political representation due to a 2009 constitutional reform that approved a 50 percent seat reservation for women—thirteen states have successfully adopted the quota. Studies analyzing increased female participation in India’s panchayats find that it has led to greater investment in public institutions, with women leaders more likely to direct resources to safe drinking water, infrastructure, and childhood immunization programs.

Today, Feb. 6, 2017, marks International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation. Learn more about the practice of female genital mutilation/cutting through these five publications from the Women and Foreign Policy program, and join the conversation on social media with @CFR_WFP to #EndFGM. Why the U.S. should help end FGM In a guest blog post on Women Around the World, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Cathy Russell argues that preventing and responding to FGM is critical to U.S. foreign policy because the practice harms girls’ health, limits access to education, and contributes to intergenerational poverty. The U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence Globally, Russell asserts, makes clear that combating FGM requires that U.S. officials engage in a multi-sectoral response—one that supports community-led initiatives, changes to social norms, and political commitments. Read the blog post on Women Around the World » A woman walks past a building in Brikama, Gambia, 30 km (20 miles) south of the capital Banjul. Child marriage and FGM occur frequently in Gambia’s urban centers, and at much higher rates in rural areas. REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly Gambia enacts historic legislation to end FGM In an interview for the Five Questions series, Dr. Isatou Touray, an activist for women’s rights and the first female candidate for the presidency of Gambia, comments on recently-enacted bans on female genital mutilation and child marriage in the small West African nation. Read the interview on Women Around the World » A mother carrying an infant on her back attends a meeting of women from several communities eradicating female genital cutting, in the western Senegalese village of Diabougo, September 10, 2007. REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly Rural community education reduces FGM prevalence Molly Melching, founder and CEO of Tostan, shares recent research evaluating the effectiveness of legislation banning FGM in rural communities, highlighting a 2014 study showing that legal bans are only effective when accompanied by grassroots activism. “As a direct result of Tostan’s [community education] program,” Melching writes, “over 7,600 communities in eight countries across Africa have publicly declared their intention to abandon FGC and child and forced marriage. This means that three million people now live in communities that have chosen—collectively and of their own volition—to end these harmful practices.” Read the blog post on Women Around the World » Jaha Dukureh (R) and Maryum Saifee (L) at the 2016 Time 100 Gala. Photo courtesy of Maryum Saifee. Enlisting religious leaders in anti-FGM efforts In a blog post on Women Around the World, Senior Fellow Catherine Powell reflects on a CFR roundtable meeting and film screening with Jaha Dukureh, named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2016 for her work advocating against female genital mutilation. During the roundtable, Dukureh stressed the importance of working with both religious leaders as well as with men and boys to change perceptions about FGM. Read the blog post on Women Around the World» More than 150 world leaders gather for the plenary meeting of the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit at the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan, New York September 27, 2015. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri FGM and the Sustainable Development Goals In a 2016 CFR report, Senior Fellow and Director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program Rachel Vogelstein analyzes the world’s new development framework and proposes a new funding mechanism to finance its gender equality targets. The sustainable development agenda, she writes, is a promising leap forward from its predecessor framework, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Sustainable Development Goal Five, focused on gender equality, for the first time creates time-bound targets related to a range of issues—from property rights and financial inclusion, to ending violence against women and FGM—that previously were overlooked.  Read the Policy Innovation Memorandum »

The Five Questions Series is a forum for scholars, government officials, civil society leaders, and foreign policy practitioners to provide timely analysis of new developments related to the advancement of women and girls worldwide. This interview is with Sarah Costa, executive director of the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC). Costa reflects on women and girls in the Syrian conflict and European migration crisis, as well as on the outcomes from the two historic summits on refugees and migrants at the United Nations General Assembly last month. The number of people displaced from their homes by conflict and persecution in 2015 was a record high at 63.5 million people—that’s one person in every 113. What are some of the unique challenges faced by displaced women and girls around the world? Women make up approximately half of the people displaced by humanitarian crises worldwide. These crises result in enormous risks to women and girls in the form of rape, assault, intimate partner violence, an increase in early marriage, and all forms of exploitation. With displacement, there’s a breakdown of traditional family and community protection systems, leading to greater violence, and there’s a breakdown in law and order, leading to impunity for perpetrators. Women often travel alone, which makes them particularly vulnerable to trafficking and to exploitation by smugglers. We’ve seen this in the Syrian crisis, as women and girls move through Europe. Among migrants and refugees, the gender inequality that women and girls face in society follows them into displacement and exacerbates these challenges. Factors like age, ethnicity, and sexual orientation can further exacerbate risks for women and girls. For example, adolescent girls are often invisible—isolated in their homes or forced into early marriages. The humanitarian community hasn’t done enough to identify them, and doesn’t understand their specific needs. This is something that the Women’s Refugee Commission cares deeply about and is trying to remedy. The situation for displaced women and girls is compounded by the lack of resources for humanitarian needs, in general, and the significant gaps in addressing the needs of women and girls in emergency responses from the beginning of crises. Focusing on the European migration crisis, how does the current EU-Turkey deal uniquely affect displaced women and girls? How can these risks be better addressed? Many of the refugees who arrived in Greece this year are women and children seeking to reunite with family members in European countries. The EU-Turkey deal has profound and distressing ramifications for these women and children, including prolonged displacement, family separation, and unacceptable hurdles to accessing legal protection. After the EU-Turkey agreement, refugees who had recently arrived in Greece were stuck, living in deplorable circumstances. When we recently traveled to Greece to assess the situation, women and girls reported feeling unsafe and were unable to access basic protection and services. Pregnant women did not have access to medical care, and families did not have diapers or milk for babies. Women were often forced to share spaces with strangers, and reported being raped at night. So many of these women suffered sexual violence and abuse en route; and yet, when they reach what should be a place of relative safety, they’re still threatened. Our primary recommendation is that the EU and Greek government do more to protect refugee women and children stuck in Greece, and provide them with the information they need to access asylum. The Greek government should work closely with humanitarian partners to ensure that refugee women and girls have access to safe gender-segregated spaces and critical reproductive health services, and that they are not detained. We also must pay close attention if women and girls are returned to Turkey to help make sure that they receive adequate protection or asylum there. Shifting attention to the recent events in New York, what do the outcomes from the UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants and the U.S.-hosted High-Level Leaders’ Summit on Refugees mean for displaced women and girls around the world? They laid out plans for the adoption of two Global Compacts in 2018—one focused on refugees and one on safe, orderly, and regular migration. How should these compacts address the needs and experiences of displaced women and girls? The summits provided a good opportunity to highlight what’s going on, but we were disappointed that there were not more concrete, tangible commitments made that would make a real difference on the ground for refugees and migrants. The New York Declaration includes good points on gender equality, gender-responsive humanitarian action, gender-based violence, and the full and equal participation of women and girls in creating solutions. Now it’s absolutely critical to ensure that the compacts that are developed over the next few years for refugees and migrants include specific actions regarding the rights, protection, and empowerment of women and girls, to which states will be held accountable. We’re also trying to push for recommendations that would expand access to legal and safe livelihood opportunities that leverage women and older girls’ capacity to sustain and protect themselves and their families. The humanitarian community often views livelihoods as long-term interventions when, in fact, if women and girls do not have access to income, it puts them at great physical risk. Of the large number of women trying to make their way to Europe, how many of them are selling their bodies to pay for a ticket and passage, or selling their bodies to pay for food? We know if basic needs are not met, women are vulnerable. There is an opportunity for the compacts to address this gap in a new and meaningful way. As part of the Grand Bargain at the May 2016 World Humanitarian Summit, aid organizations and donors committed to provide more humanitarian funding to local and national responders to improve outcomes for affected people and reduce transactional costs. An additional commitment was made to provide better funding and training for local women around the world. Why is this a priority and how can the global community make it happen? The Grand Bargain is spot on. In order for the outcomes from last month’s summits to be effective, it’s critical to make funding work for women and girls. We need humanitarian programs that address the specific needs of women and girls, and we need funding to go as directly as possible to civil society organizations. There’s something like 4,000 civil society organizations responding to crises, but they receive a tiny fraction of humanitarian funding. Civil society groups can help monitor what’s going on in country, and help hold governments accountable for all the commitments that have been made. But they need financial support to do that. When there’s violence or crises, very often it’s women’s rights groups that are the first responders to issues affecting women and girls. But time and time over they do it without any funding at all. They’re playing a critical role, but the humanitarian community doesn’t acknowledge it. The Women’s Refugee Commission will monitor the overall amount of humanitarian funding that goes to civil society groups and track whether women’s rights groups receive an equitable share. This is critical for the protection of women and girls. There is a parallel effort underway—the Call to Action on Protecting Girls and Women in Emergencies—through which humanitarian actors have committed that every humanitarian response mitigate the risk of gender-based violence and provide safe and comprehensive services for those affected by it. What’s next on this front? Our challenge now is in implementation. We know a lot about preventing gender-based violence, and some of it starts with simple steps—like locks and separate latrines for women and men. Yet, across the humanitarian community, there is a continued failure to implement this basic guidance. We need to call the humanitarian providers out on that. When they set up camps, they need to put these basic procedures in place from the beginning. It’s much harder to correct them if they’re not there, and women and girls suffer in the meantime. The international community has made strong commitments to protect women and girls in emergencies, but now we have to make sure that these pledges are really carried out.

Voices from the Field features contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article is authored by Sajeda Amin, who leads the Population Council’s work on livelihoods for adolescent girls. While growing up in Bangladesh, my grandmother was married at the age of fourteen. My mother was wed at sixteen years old. Today, two out of three girls in the country are married as children—Asia’s top rate and the world’s fourth highest. Many become mothers while they themselves are still children. And yet, I have never been more optimistic about the future for Bangladeshi girls and their communities. When I was a teenager in Dhaka in the 1970s, women had an average of seven children each, extreme poverty was endemic, and women had far fewer rights and opportunities than men. Women were lucky to live past fifty years old. But deep investments in education and family planning — coupled with the arrival of the garment industry — lifted tens of millions out of grinding poverty. Babies born in Bangladesh today are about six times more like to survive past five years old than those born in the 1970s. Women have about two children each and girls go to school at the same rate as boys. Bangladesh has proven an uplifting success story in its development — some experts would even call it a miracle. So why in a country poised for continued progress do we still see some of the world’s highest rates of child marriage? We have attempted to address the problem ineffectively: using intuition and guesswork when we should be applying evidence to empower girls and engage communities. Listening to the facts It is this paradoxical development situation that has fueled my fascination for studying Bangladesh as a demographer and social scientist. I’ve spent twenty-five years analyzing the country’s intersections between poverty, gender and youth. And now we have encouraging results from the most rigorous study to date in Bangladesh on what works to delay child marriage. Despite the growing global body of research suggesting that child marriage is best addressed through community engagement and girls’ empowerment, many in Bangladesh and elsewhere have focused on legal enforcements and “marriage busting” — breaking up underage unions as they happen — as the lead strategy to curb child marriage. Girls are often valued only for their role as future wives and mothers, rather than as future citizens and producers. While it is important to have robust laws and enforcement in any society, this misses the underlying causes of child marriage: widespread poverty, entrenched gender inequality, parental perceptions of girls’ insecurity and lack of opportunities for girls. Motivated by these issues, the Population Council completed a randomized controlled trial study to evaluate what works best to delay child marriage, involving more than 9,000 girls across three child marriage hotspot regions in rural Bangladesh. For eighteen months, girls met weekly with local mentors and peers in safe, girl-only locations, called BALIKA centers, and received life skills training. They also received one of three additional interventions: educational support, gender rights awareness training, or livelihoods skills training. All girls had access to new technologies and communities were closely consulted throughout the program. A control group received no services, crucial to comparing the effects of our interventions and determining if they worked. Understanding what works We learned the importance of empowering girls and giving them skills and knowledge for future livelihoods. Girls living in BALIKA communities were one-third less likely to get married than those not living in communities reached by the project. And the benefits did not stop at delayed marriage — girls in BALIKA communities were also more likely to stay in school, support gender equality and have improved health and well-being. This represents a milestone in our knowledge of what works to delay child marriage in Bangladesh. By providing girls with skills for future livelihoods, reaching them while they are under sixteen, creating girl-centered platforms, and engaging local mentors and support, we can make a real difference in the trajectory of girls’ lives. This week, global health and human rights leaders convene in Copenhagen for Women Deliver 2016, the world’s largest conference on the health, rights, and well-being of girls and women in the last decade. They will discuss how to fulfill the ambitious targets set out in the Sustainable Development Goals and how to translate rhetoric to reality for girls and women. So my challenge to those at Women Deliver 2016 and beyond: Governments and their development partners should prioritize girl-centered programs and safe spaces — and drastically increase their funding. Reducing child marriage should be seen as more than fulfilling human rights; it is a crucial investment in our social, health and economic future. We must systematically evaluate programs and policies that aim to improve girls’ lives and then scale up those that are proven to work. My country has worked wonders to improve mortality, education and public health. Let’s use this new evidence to ensure that the next generation of Bangladeshi girls don’t become mothers while they are still children themselves. And as we head into this landmark conference, let us not lose sight of the person at the heart of our efforts: each and every girl who strives to successfully navigate the transition to adulthood and become her own person. Personally I think of a girl in BALIKA who told us that she wants to “stand on my own two feet, and then get married.” When girls are given the skills, support, and respect to not be married until they become adults, Bangladesh can truly fulfill its development “miracle.” Content originally posted by Devex. Interested in more stories about women’s and girl’s health? Make sure to follow coverage of the fourth Women Deliver conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. Join the conversation by using #WD2016.