Global Education Summit Side Event

This year, on 28-29 July, the UK and Kenya are co-hosting the Global Education Summit: Financing GPE 2021-2025. This is a key moment for the global community to convene to support quality education for all children. The central piece of the Summit will be for world leaders to make five year pledges to support the Global Partnership for Education’s (GPE) work to help transform education systems in up to 90 countries and territories.

(Recording available to watch below)

Girls Not Brides side event

Child marriage violates girls’ rights to health, education and opportunity. Keeping girls in school – especially secondary school – is one of the best ways of preventing child marriage, while similarly, child marriage is one of the main factors leading girls to drop out of school in many countries.

Following the publication of Girls Not Brides new report on child marriage and girls’ education, this session explored the global state of child marriage and its relation to girls’ education. Participants learnt valuable insights from civil society on the cross-regional challenges and lessons from Africa, Asia and Latin America, whilst also considering the impact of COVID-19 restrictions.

To change the lives of countless girls through increasing access to education, giving them the skills to flourish and thus reduce their risk of child marriage, we need decision makers to act now. This session brought together these regional perspectives to explore the key actions we need to bring to the attention of world leaders to get girls into school, keep girls in school, and make sure that school is a safe place to be.

This side event took place at 08.00 EST / 13.00 BST / 18.30 IST on Thursday 22 July 2021. It was held in English and Spanish, with simultaneous translation in English, French and Spanish. A recording of the meeting is available for download in all three languages.