In Kenya, primary and secondary school students take courses called Life Skills Education. So do students in Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, and Swaziland. South Sudan adds “peace-building” to the subject title. Lesotho, Madagascar, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia are more direct. These countries add the word “sexuality” to the course name.

“As a leader in providing global humanitarian aid, the United States must be a leader in protecting all aid recipients,” said Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA-6) at a recent event on Capitol Hill about gender-based violence in humanitarian settings. A violation against human rights, gender-based violence (GBV) is deeply rooted in gender inequality. It’s a global phenomenon that involves sexual, physical, and/or psychological violence, including child marriage, female genital mutilation, and other harmful practices.

 “Family planning saves lives, even in times of crisis,” said Gwen K. Young, Managing Director at the Global Emergency Response Coalition at a Wilson Center event on October 8 on the importance of providing family planning and reproductive health services in humanitarian settings. Speakers from Save the Children, CARE, the International Rescue Committee, and FP2020 spoke to programmatic successes, innovative solutions, and local partnerships in fragile settings. Young highlighted that 1 in 70 people worldwide need humanitarian assistance and a quarter of these are women and girls of reproductive age. All told, more than 30 million women and girls in 42 countries.

In July 2019, more than 100 child sex trafficking victims were rescued across the United States. In 2018, Columbian authorities saved more than 80 Venezuelan women and girls from sex trafficking, and later that year, 40 trafficked Ugandan women were saved in Thailand. These individuals were among the 5 million victims of sex trafficking worldwide.

“Adolescence is a time to support young peoples’ access to information, to education, to skills and to services that can result in a healthy and safe transition into adulthood,” said Sarah Barnes, Project Director of the Maternal Health Initiative, at a recent Wilson Center event on engaging youth and protecting their sexual and reproductive health and rights. “It’s time to make adolescents a priority,” said Barnes.