Dhaka, July 4 -- The Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) is taking place at a time of escalating debt crises, rising poverty, declining food security, and proliferating climate-related damage. These crises are all exacerbated by deep reductions in official development assistance (ODA), and they all disproportionately affect women and girls, especially in developing countries.

Almost half of humanity - 3.4 billion people - now live in countries that direct more revenues toward servicing interest on debt than toward education or health, where a lack of investment directly undermines economic opportunities for women and girls. Moreover, only 5% of ODA goes toward programs with gender equality as the principal...