Challenges and potential solutions for adolescent girls in urban settings: a rapid evidence review

Delivering on development goals requires focusing on urban areas of the Global South. Not only do three quarters of the world’s urban inhabitants already live in Southern countries, but given that 90% of urban growth between now and 2050 is predicted to take place in Asia and Africa, the scales are set to tip further still. With migration flows in many countries already heavily feminised, as adolescent girls and young women flock to cities to take up employment in factories or as domestic workers, prudent planning requires adopting a gendered and age-sensitive lens that will enable us to understand the experiences and needs of the young adolescent girls who are set to be disproportionately common in the cities of the Global South. This rapid evidence review which resulted in 101 documents identified in a desk-based search of seven databases, is aimed at doing just that. It brings together evidence that speaks to the vulnerabilities of poor, young adolescent girls—primarily those inhabiting slums--reviews a selected group of evaluated interventions, and flags-up emerging promising practice interventions that might help to mitigate the risks that urban girls face.