Empowering adolescents through social protection

Social protection is a set of tools and policies to help people during life's challenges - was the definition formulated by the moderator Femi Oke at the CSW63 side event Empowering adolescents through social protection. Hosted by DFID, GAGE, UNICEF and ODI, this panel discussion included representatives from Jordan, Ethiopia and Bangladesh on the topic of social protection. 

The discussion opened with two keynote speakers, Henrietta E Fore Executive Director, UNICEF, and Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon, Minister of State for the Commonwealth and the United Nations at the Foreign and Commonwealth office of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Both expressed  examples of how social protection work was both failing and aiding women and adolescent girls around the world.
 Lord Ahmad expressed that every tool and power available to governments and organizations be put into social protection services. Fore spoke of how research on social protection services gives a voice to women who may not have one. She spoke of 5 key areas in which UNICEF has recognized a need "to scale up social protections" in order to better help women and young girls. Birth registration, educational grants and scholarships for girls to enroll in and remain in school, enhancing economic participation through skills training, strengthening research and data collection, and calling on a redesign of the workplace are all ways in which people can be more responsive to social protection around the world. 
A presentation by the GAGE consortium shared data taken from a 9 year study on social protection. The evidence provided many positives and negatives but shared an overall message of a "promising role of social protections in reducing gender inequality."
Though the event was about empowering adolescent girls much of the discussion had focused on social protection. Each speaker appeared to have an agenda that the event did not seem to have time to hear. The moderator moved them quickly along in order to provide opportunities for questions from the several members of the audience. An adolescent girl representative from WAGGGS (World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts) posed a question about how government was integrating  adolescent girls' needs into policy. Each country was able to give a brief example of ways in which the government had social protection in place for adolescents or how it is being worked into policies.  Other questions asked about not just protection programs but also those that empowered women and girls, and another about child brides. Overall, the questions help direct the event back to its original topic of empowering adolescents through social protection services.