Mark Hendrick – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Mark Hendrick on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to implement the actions identified for it in the Government’s Ending Violence against Women and Girls Strategy 2016-2020, published in March 2016; and when a member of staff from her Department last attended a Violence against Women and Girls Stakeholder Meeting chaired by the Home Office.

Rory Stewart

DFID has made significant progress in scaling up efforts to address violence against women and girls, nearly doubling our programming, from 64 programmes in 2012 to 127 in 2016, and working with partners across all sectors. Our £36 million programme to end Child, Early and Forced Marriage is helping thousands of girls escape losing any choice or control over their future. We have committed £8 million to support AmplifyChange, an initiative to support civil society activists to end child marriage and address a broader range of gender issues. In 2015 we provided £2.25 million of support to the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women and Girls which provides grants to organisations across the world to tackle gender-based violence.

ICAI published its review of DFID’s efforts to eliminate violence against women and girls on Tuesday 17 May 2016. This review gave DFID’s performance a ‘Green’ rating, the highest achievable. The UK and DFID’s new Secretary of State will continue to lead the global effort to improve the lives of women and girls.

The last Home Office chaired Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Stakeholder Meeting took place on July 11 2016. No officials from other departments were invited to this meeting. However, one of the action points arising from this meeting was to invite other departments in future. An official from DFID’s VAWG Team will attend the next meeting.