Girl Effect: DfID Funding

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Sheehan]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government why Department for International Development funding to the non-governmental organisation Girl Effect has been withdrawn.

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, the International Development Secretary decided to end the partnership with Girl Effect following a review of the programme. Empowering women and girls around the world remains a priority, but she judged that there are more effective ways to invest UK aid and to deliver even better results for the world’s poorest as well as value for taxpayers’ money.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. Popular culture is used to tackle difficult issues because it works. For example, many in your Lordships’ House will be familiar with “The Archers”. The storyline of domestic abuse endured by Helen Archer resulted in a 20% increase in calls to the domestic abuse helpline. The very popular Ethiopian girl group Yegna—dubbed the Ethiopian Spice Girls by the Daily Mail—reaches 8.5 million people and helps transform the lives of some of the hardest-to-reach and most disadvantaged girls in the world. Why, when faced by attacks from the Daily Mail, did the Secretary of State withdraw funding from this multi-A-rated DfID project?

[Lord Bates]

The decision was taken, as I mentioned earlier, because it was deemed that there were other things which it would be more effective to spend the money on. There is another programme operating in Ethiopia, End Child Marriage, which focuses more on the rural areas that the Girl Effect programme was not reaching, and was deemed to have more effect because it actually worked directly with the communities concerned. Although we will not continue to fund it, because we will be sending the money elsewhere, we hope that Girl Effect will continue. We acknowledge that it did some good work.