Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps the Government is taking to uphold the commitment it made at the 9th Commonwealth Youth Ministers meeting outlined in point 4 of the Final Communiqué to take meaningful and concrete actions to empower and address the specific needs of marginalised young people in Commonwealth countries.

DFID’s recently published Economic Development strategy sets out our firm commitment to economic inclusion, and focus on the poorest and most marginalised young people who are routinely excluded and experience multiple barriers including social discrimination, unfair laws and violence. We will work to expand job opportunities for rising youth populations and will do more to help people with disabilities access productive employment by ensuring that people with disabilities are systematically included in economic development programmes and approaches.

We have led the way on reaching the most marginalised children including through flagship programmes such as the Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) which is supporting 1 million of the world’s most marginalised girls in a number of Commonwealth countries such as Sierra Leone, Ghana, Uganda and Kenya.