Now is the time to stand with girls in all their diversity 

Together, we have been making progress against the discrimination, human rights abuses and violations that girls and women face every day. But 2025 is a tipping point for girls’ rights with a harsh rollback of hard won progress and severe defunding of critical work by some of the world’s largest donors.

Our work to advocate for girls’ rights is more important than ever to protect the progress we have made and ensure all girls have the opportunities and freedoms to make decisions about their own lives and realise their full potential.

A gender equal world would be fairer, safer, healthier, more sustainable, and more prosperous for us all. That’s why it is critical to invest in that future. The risks to girls caused by recent cuts are profound. Jeopardising their sexual and reproductive health and rights, increasing the threat of gender-based violence, and further limiting their access to an education.

The current freeze on payments for US-government funded aid projects comes as, globally, multiple other countries are cutting back foreign aid spending. As the largest global aid donor, the negative impacts of this move will be felt worldwide. Governments are by far the biggest funders of sustainable development and humanitarian assistance and collectively, cuts to overseas development assistance (ODA) around the world mean that as a sector we now face the loss of an estimated USD$12 billion annually.

Plan International has US-funded projects in 12 countries: Nepal, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Bangladesh, Philippines, Malawi, Egypt, Jordan, Mexico, and Honduras. The impact of cuts to development assistance on the girls and children in these communities will have immediate consequences on their livelihoods and futures.

For example, in northern Ethiopia, we have a warehouse containing 32 metric tonnes of goods and 10,000 doses of pharmaceuticals intended for families forced to flee their homes because of conflict that were provided through US funding. Due to the immediate stop work order applied to all US aid, these goods cannot be distributed. They are perishable and they are stuck. The people they were intended for are left without support.

In Nepal, we are hearing stories like Ganga’s, a young girl who has been attending catch-up classes provided by US-funded projects with a goal of passing her 8th grade exam so she can enter high school. If she doesn’t pass the exam, it is very likely that her parents will be forced to enter her into child marriage. When girls aren’t support to complete their secondary education, their lifetime earnings dramatically decrease, national growth rates fall, child marriage rates increase, child mortality rates go up,  maternal mortality rates increase, and child stunting goes up.¹

We have been working with children in Nigeria who have had their education impacted by violence, helping them to access learning centres through a US-funded project. We are deeply concerned that without these kinds of support, young people will be at increased risk of recruitment by armed groups.

As funding is removed, stories like these will become all the more common and that is completely unacceptable. Children, especially girls, need our support now more than ever.

In recent years, girls, women and their allies around the world have made incredible gains and significant advances, including:

• More than two-thirds of all countries have reached gender parity in primary school enrolment.²
• Births to adolescent girls aged 15 to 19 have fallen by a third since 2000, thanks to better access to comprehensive sexuality education and sexual and reproductive health services.
• The proportion of women married as children has decreased from 23% to 19% between 2012 and 2022.³

However, this progress is far from even. At the same time, we are also witnessing highly concerning setbacks to girls’ and women’s rights in several areas – from bans on comprehensive sexuality education, the restriction of access to safe abortion and anti LGBTQIA+ laws.

Between 2019 and 2022, 40% of countries stagnated or declined in regard to gender equality.⁴ Without urgent action to stand with girls, global gender equality could be worse in 2030 than when the Sustainable Development Goals were agreed in 2015.⁵

With the rollbacks on rights and extreme cuts to critical support, girls today risk having fewer rights than their mothers and, in some cases, even their grandmothers. According to Equal Measures, “a girl born today will have to wait until her 97th birthday – beyond her expected lifespan – to celebrate an equal society.”⁶

What is Plan doing?

The world has been moving in the right direction, but too slowly, and with too little funding. The situation for girls will dramatically worsen with funders, especially governments, rolling back on their previous commitments to the fundamental rights of girls and women.

We remain steadfast in our commitment to achieve a just world that advances children’s rights and equality for girls in all their diversity, in line with our purpose, values, and global strategy.

Plan International’s goal is to be a locally led, globally connected organisation. Our long-term presence in communities allows us to invest in partnerships that grow alongside children, youth, and their families. We are committed to working with Plan Country Offices and the local communities we work alongside who are impacted by these cuts, to develop appropriate contingency plans and look into alternative methods of funding. This will include doing our best to deploy impacted local staff elsewhere across Plan.

We are also working to initiate a fund within Plan to help sustain strategic projects, and to support partners and civil society with an aim to minimise the impact of the funding cuts felt by children, especially girls.

We believe all children and young people, regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity, and socio-economic background, should be able to live a life free from discrimination, violence and stigma.

Together, we won’t stop until we are all equal.

For more information, please contact:

Kylie Whittard on kylie.whittard@plan.org.au or +61 0412 229 850