UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has met with former prime minister Gordon Brown to discuss a campaign to promote education for women and girls in developing countries.
The campaign, entitled #LeaveNoGirlBehind, seeks to deliver 12 years of quality education for women and girls around the world, and aims to help up to one million of the world’s poorest people improve their lives through opportunities provided by education. It launched last month in London, UK, during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
Johnson met with Brown, who now serves as the UN’s Global Education envoy, as the latest in a series of high-profile engagements to discuss the campaign. Previous meetings have been held with Nobel Prize laureate and women’s education campaigner Malala Yousafzai, and philanthropist Melinda Gates, with the aim of gathering a coalition of political actors who can lobby world leaders to prioritise women and girls in education policies.
What did Johnson say about the meeting?
The #LeaveNoGirlBehind campaign echoes European efforts to promote education for women and girls in the developing world ahead of its European Development Days 2018 event, a topic which has become increasingly important in recent years. Empowering women and girls with education carries significant economic benefits, Johnson emphasised in a speech after the meeting.
He stated: “If we fail to educate girls, we store up huge problems for the future and wilfully miss out on boosting economic growth, managing population pressures and creating stable, prosperous societies.”
Johnson also suggested that sexism is responsible for the lack of education opportunities afforded to women and girls throughout the world, and welcomed Brown’s agreement on this issue. He added: “It was a pleasure to listen to [Brown’s] ideas and exchange views on the ways which the UK can become the global leader in ending the gross sexism behind attitudes which shut 130 million girls out of the classroom.”
The UK has already provided some £212m in funding to support the aim of providing one million vulnerable girls across the Commonwealth with 12 years of quality education by 2030.
