Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what progress her Department has made on implementing its Youth Agenda, published in April 2016.

DFID is committed to empowering and engaging young people. Since the launch of the Youth Agenda in 2016 we have: introduced youth panels across several of our country offices, launched an organisation-wide network of young people, supported a further 15,430 young people from all backgrounds to complete the International Citizen Service programme, supported youth-led research projects, and given youth voices a platform at a number of international summits including the Family Planning Summit in July 2017, the Disability Summit in July 2018 and the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in April 2018. We continue to champion young people in our overseas programming. For example, we are currently working with over 735,000 adolescent girls to support their transition into secondary school.

Between 2015 and 2018 DFID supported 11.4 million children in primary and lower secondary education, of whom 5.6 million were girls. Currently, DFID’s flagship Girls Education Challenge Fund has supported up to 1.5 million marginalised girls to benefit from a quality education.