One year ago, the U.S. government launched the world’s first foreign policy strategy solely dedicated to the rights and empowerment of adolescent girls: the U.S. Global Strategy to Empower Adolescent Girls. Since then, in an unprecedented effort, six U.S. government agencies have joined forces to bring to bear the critical priorities of this strategy — which aims to ensure adolescent girls are educated, healthy, economically and socially empowered, able to live lives free from violence and discrimination, therefore promoting global development, security and prosperity around the world. The value of this policy is clear: evidence shows that approaches to empowering girls must take into account all of the complex ways in which girls lead their lives.
This is the good news.
The bad news is that at a time when the United States should be redoubling its efforts to show leadership to tackle some of the biggest issues facing girls, President Donald Trump has suggested a dramatic slash in an already stretched foreign affairs budget that, if realized, will have devastating effects on this important work. At Girls Not Brides USA, we know that for any policy to be impactful, it needs to be resourced to bring it to life. Otherwise, it’s just words on a piece of paper. The Girl Strategy is no different.
About the authors
Lyric Thompson
Lyric Thompson is the founder and CEO of the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative. She is an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and an appointee on the U.S. Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board.
Helena Minchew
Helena supports IWHC’s U.S. foreign policy portfolio through working with a number of technical and advocacy coalitions, including as a co-chair of Girls Not Brides USA, and helps to define IWHC’s engagement with members of Congress and administration officials. Helena also contributes toward achieving IWHC’s advocacy objectives for sexual and reproductive health and rights at the international level, having represented IWHC at the U.N. in New York, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Geneva, Switzerland.
Rachel Clement
Rachel Clement is a policy associate at the International Center for Research on Women. She is a co-chair of Girls Not Brides USA and on the Steering Committee of the Coalition for Adolescent Girls. She has worked in Austria, Costa Rica, Ecuador, the Philippines, Russia and Vietnam with and for youth, primarily on gender issues. Rachel earned her M.A. from George Washington University and in International Development and her B.A. from the University of Colorado at Boulder in Sociology and Spanish.
Gayatri Patel
Gayatri Patel is the senior policy advocate for gender at CARE USA. In this capacity, she leads the advocacy and outreach efforts of the organization on the gender priorities that cut across all of CARE’s work both in the United States and globally. Gayatri is a co-chair of the Girls Not Brides USA Coalition as well as of the Steering Group of the Coalition to End Violence Against Women. Gayatri joined CARE after nearly 10 years advising the U.S. State Department on a variety of human rights and humanitarian issues.
