• Trains 33 Sexual Assault Referral Centres
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has launched a new global partnership with 11 businesses to improve girls’ access to education and employment.
Countries like Nigeria and Bangladesh, two countries where significant barriers to girls’ education remain, will be one of the first to benefit from the fund.
The UK Government is contributing an initial £9m (N4.89 billion), with businesses providing £11m (N5.98 billion) in total.
The programme aims to provide high quality skills training to around 1 million girls around the world.
Improving girls’ access to education is a key part of the UK’s foreign policy, to ensure we build back better from the pandemic and prevent a lost generation.
Investing in education helps lift communities out of poverty and protects girls from early marriage, forced labour and gender-based violence.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is launching a new £20m business partnership as the UK continues to lead global efforts to improve girls’ access to education in developing countries.
Johnson said: “The United Kingdom has long been a proud and mighty champion of this fundamental cause and today we take one leap further through our first Global Partnership of its kind – opening the opportunity for one million girls across the developing world to have access to high quality skills training.
“Ensuring every girl and young woman across the globe receives 12 years of quality education is the greatest tool in our armoury to end the world’s great injustices.
“Delivering on this mission will be one of the best defences against ignorance, ensure the greatest protection from prejudice and put a rocket booster behind our hopes and dreams for global development in the years to come.”
Meanwhile, UK government has organised a four-days training workshop for all 33 Sexual Assault Referral Centres (SARCs) and their main stakeholders in Nigeria.
The workshops were aimed at offering critical support to SARCs, who provide vital assistance, forensic and medical services to children, young people, women, and men who have been sexually abused, assaulted or raped. It also supported police and prosecution responses to crimes of sexual violence, abuse and exploitation.
SARC managers and stakeholders at both state and federal level, officials from Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Women Affairs, The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Ministry of Health, the Nigerian Police Force, as well as staff from hospitals. NGOs including Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC), International Federation of Women Lawyers, Nigeria (FIDA), Nigerian Civil Defence Corps, and UN Women were participants at the workshops.
