Break Free! Niger SUMMARY
Millions of young people don’t have access to appropriate, gender-responsive, quality SRHR education, information and services. This makes them vulnerable to unintended pregnancies, often followed by child marriage (CM). The Break Free! programme empowers adolescents and young people to make their own free and informed choices to speak out and have control over their SRH and lives. BF! is tackling root causes of gender inequality,  unequal power relations and discriminatory social norms, systems, structures, policies and practices, supported by civil society and improved legislation. The project will be implemented between 2021 and 2025 by the Break Free! Consortium consisting of Plan International Netherlands, SAT and FAWE, technical partners KIT and RMT in collaboration with Netherlands’ Embassies. It will be carried out in Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger and has a regional Pan-African component to sustain the country programmes. The prevention of CEFMU and TP is more urgent than ever, as the COVID-19 situation has dramatically changed the context in which adolescent girls live, resulting in increasing levels of gender based violence, rising sexual exploitation, decreased access to education and increasing rates of child marriage and teenage pregnancies.. This crisis has further excluded adolescent girls and boys in remote areas from accessing ASRHR information and services, especially concerning contraception and other essential ASRH services. Lockdown restrictions and enforcement of COVID-19 prevention methods have led to an increase in harmful practices such as Female Genital Mutilation/ Cutting (FGM/C) and CEFMU, reducing the effectiveness of referral pathways for essential services, and resulting in poorer SRH outcomes for girls. The loss of employment and income by parents and caregivers is expected to increase girls’ school dropout and girls’ vulnerability to sexual exploitation, resulting in TP and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), including HIV. This economic downturn will likely have a large impact on the poverty levels in Niger where CEFMU incidence is already the highest worldwide. Because poverty is a key driver of child marriage, these economic impacts are likely to increase rates of CEFMU and TP in vulnerable communities. At the same time, many girls have dropped out from school and are likely never to return, leaving them with few options other than CEFMU and TP. Empowering adolescents to claim their SRHR rights, supported by civil society, will be achieved if  CSOs, youth-led groups and networks are strengthened to lobby and advocate for improved legislation and to promote social norm change in favour of the prevention of CM/TP. 
Education opportunities and a community supportive of girls’ education will stimulate adolescent girls at risk of TP/CM to access and remain in school, while promoting the re-entrance of girls who have discontinued school due to pregnancy or other reasons. In order to create a supportive and improved socio-cultural environment that promotes education for girls and SRHR for young people, relevant gate keepers, including community leaders, teachers and parents will be made aware of the importance of adopting attitudes favourable to keeping girls in school. 
Supporting civil society organisations to organise, participate and communicate enables these to claim better education and access to quality ASRHR for girls, boys  and young women, and influence decision-making processes. Duty bearers and decision-makers are made aware of and encouraged to take action to fulfil the education needs of girls based on the effective lobby and advocacy by civil society. Decision-makers at localm national, regional and continental level will be sensitized to build linkages between the levels resulting that civil society is able to elevate issues to higher decision-making levels, and vice versa, they can hold lower-level policy makers and duty bearers accountable for implementing decisions taken at higher levels. This will be enabled by establishing participation and accountability mechanisms between decision-makers/duty bearers and civil society with the support of enhanced youth agency The programme intervention is a.o. based upon the learnings and results of the Yes I Do programme (2015-2020), implemented by Plan and partners in five of the nine BF! countries, enriched with experience of FAWE and SAT’s programmes on access to education and ASRHR. All BF! partners have experience in improving legislation and policies to prevent CEFMU and improve ASRHR and implementation thereof, through L&A and enhancing adolescent’s skills to claim their SRH rights and access to quality education. In the past, similar efforts resulted a.o. into the development of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Model Law on Eradicating Child Marriage, which served as legal framework for national law and policy-makers and was used as civil society advocacy tool across the SADC region. It resulted as well in strengthened CSOs, youth hubs and girls clubs, which have become promoters of ASRHR.  However, CSOs advocating for GYW rights and ASRHR particularly face an increasingly hostile environment fuelled by authoritarian governments, traditional/religious systems and fundamentalist forces, depicting ASRHR and gender equality as threatening traditional and family values. In the Sahel focus countries including Niger, conflict affects freedom of movement and drives authorities to further confine civic space.  Deeply rooted gender norms combined with authoritarian governments limit the space for CSOs to claim SRH rights.
By establishing participation and accountability mechanisms between decision makers and civil society with the support of enhanced youth agency, political will increases and civil society has the capacity to advocate for improved ASRHR and access to education related policies, laws and resourcing resulting in prevention of CM and TP. Within the population of girls and young women (between 10 and 24 years), the programme aims to strengthen the influence and participation of GYW who suffer most from (intersectional) discrimination and exclusion and who are vulnerable to CEFMU and teenage pregnancy and actively engage adolescent and young boys and men for this. These include:
•	GYW living in poor, remote rural areas and urban slums
•	GYW experiencing gender based violence (particularly girls who have married early)
•	GYW with disabilities
•	GYW who are out of school
•	GYW from sexual minority groups Break Free! contributes to a lasting transformative effect on engagement of GYW in decision-making. The following strategies will be implemented: 
1.	Strengthening and resourcing GYW-led organizations: investing in the resource base of GYW-led organizations will help them access other funding in the future. 
2.	Support social movements: social movements can accelerate lasting change in societies’ structures and norms. Break Free! will bring together child-rights and feminist organisations and GYW-led groups to push collectively for transformative change in gender norms, and for institutional reform. 
3.	Engaging boys & men, parents, and traditional and religious leaders: these actors are crucial allies to ensure structural change and permanent effects when it comes to norms change. Because of their status and their role in socialisation processes, these actors promote structural change in societies. 
4.	Engaging media: BreakFree! will use media as a tool to amplify GYWs voices, and will target media as a powerful agent of change. Opening space for GYW’s voices and leadership in the media will ultimately influence broader communities, and has lasting effects beyond the programme.
5.	Organisational capacity strengthening of CSO’s: investments in advocacy capacity, building relationships with decision-makers, strengthening fundraising skills will have a lasting effect on their influencing work beyond Break Free!. 
6.	Linking local, national, regional and global: BreakFree! is implemented at different levels that are strategically interconnected. Interventions and results in one domain trigger change in other domains, and changes at local, national, regional and international levels are connected and influence each other.