Our plan to make life better and fairer for women and girls everywhere, 2023 to 2030 (easy read)
Published 8 March 2023
© Crown copyright 2023
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The plan will be from 2023 to 2030.
This is an easy read version of: FCDO International Women and Girls Strategy 2023 to 2030
About us
We are called the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Or FCDO for short.
We are part of the UK Government.
We work with other countries to help solve big problems in the world.
About this plan
This plan is about our work to help make life better and fairer for all women and girls in the world.
That means making sure that all women and girls get their human rights.
We all have human rights. Like the right to be safe and to take part in the community.
But some people are trying to stop women and girls from getting their rights.
It also means making sure that women and girls have the same chances to do things as men and boys.
It is important that women and girls have the same chances to do well.
For example, when women and girls go to school and work it helps them to have a good life.
It also helps the whole country to do well.
But women and girls are often left out and treated unfairly.
And women and girls can be treated unfairly for more than one reason.
For example, women and girls might also be treated unfairly because of:
- their religion and way of life
- their disability if they have one
- who they want relationships with
There are some big problems in the world that are making life even worse for many women and girls.
Like war, big weather problems and big health problems like COVID-19.
For example, many women and girls have even less money than before.
And violence often happens more to women and girls when there are big problems in the country.
Some things have changed to make life better for women and girls.
But there are still many problems.
We must change this so the world is better and fairer for everyone.
The 3 main things that we will work on
There are 3 main areas that we think are most important to work on.
1. Education
We need to change things because:
Girls go to school less than boys in many countries.
Many girls with disabilities cannot go to school because the schools are not easy for them to go to.
Many girls are not learning enough at school.
That is worse because of big problems like wars and COVID-19.
Sometimes people hurt girls or treat them badly when they go to school.
What we are doing
We want girls to have at least 12 years of good education to help them do well.
We have some big projects.
They are helping girls to go to school and get a good education.
That includes many girls with disabilities.
We also have a project that helps girls go to school if there are big problems in the country like war or floods.
We have found out good information about helping children to do well at school.
We will share this information with other countries to help change things.
2. Supporting women and girls to make their own choices and take part in the community
That includes making sure that women and girls get good health care and all their rights.
This is important because:
Many women and girls are not allowed to choose what is best for them.
For example, the law in some countries says that women cannot work.
People often stop women and girls from making decisions about their local areas and countries.
Many women and girls cannot choose what to do with their own health and bodies.
That includes choosing if they want relationships, sex or children.
What we are doing
The UK has done some good work to support women and girls to make their own choices.
We will work with other countries to help them support women and girls.
That means we will support countries to make some changes, like:
Making health care better for women and girls.
Supporting more women to learn new skills, work and earn money.
Making laws and rules that work well for women and girls.
Making sure that women and girls can speak up and say what they want in a safe way.
3. Stopping violence
This is important because:
A lot of different violence happens to women and girls.
For example:
Women and girls might be hurt in a sexual way.
That means someone might make them have sex or do sexual things.
Girls might be forced to get married when they are very young.
Violence can also happen to women and girls on the internet.
When women and girls are hurt like that it can change their lives and stop them from doing well.
What we are doing
We know some good ways to stop violence happening to women and girls.
We can share that information with other countries.
We will make sure that women and girls can have a say about how to stop violence and what support they want.
There are 3 main things that we want to happen with our work
1. Making sure that women and girls are part of important work and decisions
We will do a big piece of work on this.
We will meet with many organisations around the world.
We will talk with them a lot about the rights of women and girls.
Then we can all work together to really change things for women and girls.
For example, we can start new ways to make education better and stop violence against women and girls.
Some countries and groups are working to stop women and girls from getting their rights.
We can do more to stop that if we speak up for women and girls together.
We will make sure that women and girls can take part and have their say when we talk about their rights.
That includes supporting women to be leaders and helping to make big decisions in a safe way.
2. Making sure that women and girls are a big part of all our work
We will make sure that the work we spend money on is helping to make life better for women and girls.
We will support organisations that are run by women.
We will do more to support women and girls who are often left out.
Like women and girls with disabilities.
We will set up a group of people who do not work for us.
That includes women and girls who have often been left out.
They will check how we are doing with the work in this plan.
3. Learning more and getting better information
We need to learn more about how to make life better and fairer for all women and girls.
We will find out information about what works.
We will help to try out some new ideas.
Like new ideas about how to give girls a good education when there are big problems in the country.
We will share what we learn with many people.
That includes other countries and organisations.
And we will also learn from them.