Nepal – Aid Cuts Result in Girls Out of School & Vulnerable to Child Marriage

A short-lived U.S-funded education program brought teachers to villages where girls had never been allowed to attend school. Its abrupt end has left many of those girls without a path back to learning — and under increased pressure to marry.

By Sunita Neupane // 23 December 2025

GANESHMAN CHARNATH, Nepal — Sixteen-year-old Apsana Khatun has never stepped into a formal classroom. For six years, she has attended the same primary-level lessons at her local madrasa, where girls rarely progress beyond basic religious instruction. Meanwhile, her brothers attend private school, learning subjects that promise futures she can only imagine.

Her own days pass in a tight loop: cooking over a smoky stove, washing dishes and clothes by the well, herding goats, and cutting grass for the cows. Each morning, she prepares her younger brother for the school she herself was never allowed to attend. The contrast sits heavily on her shoulders.

In Khatun’s village, girls her age are expected to marry. Her mother, Khajija, married at 14, and Khatun’s older sister at 16. Her father works as a laborer in the Gulf to save for his daughters’ dowries, payments traditionally made by a bride’s family at marriage. But stories from her neighborhood of women beaten or even killed for failing to bring a dowry have left her fearful, Khatun said.

What she wants is an education.

“I have never dreamed,” she said. “If I had gone to school, maybe I would have had dreams. Dreams I could have held onto. But I don’t even know what those dreams would have been.”.

In January 2024, Khatun’s world shifted. The United States Agency for International Development launched the Equity and Inclusion in Education program, designed to help vulnerable children — especially girls — enter or return to school. For the first time, teachers came to Khatun’s village to enroll girls in accelerated classes meant to bridge years of lost education.

“I was so excited when I found out I could enroll in grade eight after just two years of schooling,” Khatun said.

Khatun had completed one year of classes when her education ended. Teachers who had been coming to her village to teach classes at the local madrasa stopped arriving after the Trump administration’s sudden foreign aid cuts suspended the Equity and Inclusion in Education program in January 2025 and terminated it in April. Other U.S.-funded education programs — including a $40 million effort to improve early grade reading and a $17 million government-to-government education direct financing initiative — were also terminated.

The abrupt halt has left children like Khatun without access to education once again.

“With these programs ending, dropout rates will soar, irregular attendance will rise, and child marriage will become an even bigger threat in villages like Khatun’s,” said Deepak Majhi, equity and inclusive education officer at local implementing organization Center for Education and Human Resource Development.

A brief opening — then the door slams shut

Khajija Khatun did not encourage her daughters to attend school. She did, however, agree to them learning from teachers who came to their villages as part of the accelerated program under USAID’s Equity and Inclusive Education program.

“Our religion forbids girls from going to school,” Khajija said of her Muslim faith.

She raised five children but chose to educate only her two sons; she currently pays 4,500 Nepali rupees ($31) per month for her youngest son’s schooling. “If I let my daughters go to school, the people in the village will talk badly about my family and me,” she said.

Nepal’s school system requires eight years of basic education and four years of secondary schooling before students can go on to higher education. The new USAID program offered a route into that pipeline for children who had never attended school or had dropped out by targeting 900,000 vulnerable children in 1,900 schools across 18 districts.

Recognizing that local culture and norms are significant barriers to girls’ education, the program also aimed to engage community groups, parent-teacher associations, youth organizations, and local governments to promote more inclusive education.

The program was coordinated by Plan International Nepal under the government of Nepal’s School Education Sector Reform Plan, with local nongovernmental organizations Aasaman Nepal and Karnali Integrated Rural Development and Research Centre leading implementation. Its abrupt end cost about 250 jobs across Plan International and its implementing partners, according to Ram Kishan, Nepal country director of Plan International.

The Center for Education and Human Resource Development’s Majhi said that the program’s end has delayed the policy goal of providing basic education to the estimated 5.9% of total out-of-school children across Nepal by April 2028.

“Children starved of education’s light, who waited eagerly, now face endless delay,” Majhi said.

The gains at risk

Before the funding cut, the program had already built an extensive network across Madhesh and Karnali provinces. Teams conducted house-to-house surveys to identify out-of-school children, and trained teachers traveled to remote villages to deliver structured lessons.

Classes were designed to help students catch up with peers, while schools started grievance committees at the local level to receive, review, and resolve complaints from community members about issues related to education, inclusion, and rights. E-libraries expanded digital access, while new materials supported children with disabilities.

In Khatun’s community, four teachers visited six days a week to teach English, Nepali, math, and science. In one year, she advanced to Grade 6. Another year of accelerated learning would have placed her in Grade 8.

“People here see educating a son as a smart investment. The more educated he is, the higher the dowry he will bring home,” said Dayaram Paswan, an English teacher who traveled to Khatun’s village. “But a daughter? That’s seen as pure expense; the family will have to pay a dowry to marry her off regardless.”

Child marriage persists in Nepal despite laws that criminalize marriage under the age of 20, with 35% of girls marrying before age 18. The risk is highest in Madhesh province, at 42.4%, where Khatun lives.

The Nepali government has a national strategy to end child marriage by 2030, focusing on education, community engagement, and legal enforcement. But implementation remains challenging, especially in remote and disadvantaged regions where cultural attitudes and limited resources sustain the practice.

Mandira Kumari Bishwakarma, a social mobilizer from the local implementing NGO Aasaman Nepal, visited the homes of girls to counsel parents on educating their daughters. After the program ended, the girls kept asking when it would resume.

“I don’t know how to respond,” she said.

“This was the only program that led children aged 10 to 18 from darkness into light, the gateway for those who never reached school,” said Chhoti Mukhiya, local government education officer at Ganeshman Charnath municipality, which had become a model for reaching children who had never attended school.

Now, there is no budget, no staff, and no mechanism to continue. Teachers no longer visit villages. Remedial classes have disbanded. Complaint boxes are gone. Computers sit unused because no teachers are trained to operate them.

“Disadvantaged and disabled children will now fall even further behind,” Mukhiya said.

Nepal’s education system has made big gains since the 1990s. Primary net enrollment rose from 60% in the 1980s to 96.9% in 2019, while female literacy doubled from 17% in 1991 to approximately 70% in 2021; and primary schools expanded from 321 in 1950 to more than 35,000 today. But Madhesh province has long lagged. Of Nepal’s 405,414 illiterate students, Madhesh accounts for the highest share, with 243,928 children unable to read or write, according to the 2021 Nepal census.

The USAID program was designed to close that gap. And progress was swift: By January 2025, the program had been rolled out in 277 schools, had reached 300,000 children, and trained over 1,000 teachers in Madhesh province, according to Plan International. Coordination across federal, provincial, and local governments was underway, with essential supplies — computers, textbooks, bags, pencils, and water bottles — ready for distribution to students.

“All our efforts have sunk into oblivion after the stoppage,” said Ajay Kumar Yadav, program manager at Aasaman Nepal. “We built deep community trust, only for it to vanish in moments.”

Twenty laptops, headphones, and servers had already been delivered to Barmajhiya Secondary School in Ganeshman Charnath municipality. But only one teacher — Amar Kumar Kapar — received training on how to use them. He teaches more than 100 students per class. “I teach one student, but by their next turn four days later, they’ve forgotten it all,” he said.

“If all teachers were trained, computers could integrate across subjects, but now we’re stuck relying on just one teacher,” said school principal Jibachha Yadav.

Plan International’s country director, Ram Kishan, said the program had created “discrimination-free school environments” where all kinds of students studied side by side.

“There was no bias between boys and girls, low- or high-learners, Muslims or non-Muslims,” Kishan said.

What comes next

Bharatpur Secondary School, about a 15-minute walk from Apsana Khatun’s village, launched remedial classes in January 2024 to help struggling students catch up. Teachers saw clear improvements, especially among children who miss school during planting and harvest seasons.

Math teacher Bisheshwar Sharma explained irregular attendance surges during rice planting, harvesting, or parental sickness, keeping 20% of students away for weeks. “Remedial classes are a game-changer here. The weakest in math turned passers after,” he said.

These vital remedial classes have also been dropped.

Following the closure of the USAID program in Ganeshman municipality, some schools now offer fee-based remedial classes. But families attending government schools cannot afford the monthly tuition of 1,200 Nepalese rupees ($8).

Student Jyoti Sharma is enrolled in a fee-based course to learn math, science, and English, and dreams of a government job. Her mother earns 300 Nepalese rupees ($2) daily by selling vegetables to support her and her brother.

“I help with work to scrape tuition fees together, but I skip school too often,” Sharma said. “I can’t always pay.”

Majhi noted that after the USAID program launched, the government did not implement any other equity or early learning initiatives, expecting USAID to support this area. This year, only 3.6 million Nepalese rupees ($24,765) were allocated nationally for equitable and inclusive education.

“There is no updated data on which children are out of school,” he said. “Efforts in these areas must now start from scratch.”

With classes shuttered, Khatun’s mother has now revived marriage plans for both Apsana and her 14-year-old sister Anjum.

“If classes continued, I could prove to everyone they’re studying. Now neighbors say they’re too old for marriage,” Khajija said. Her husband, who has worked as a laborer in Qatar for 20 years, is saving for their dowries and their brothers’ education.

Anjum, who shadows Khatun through every chore, studied alongside her for the year they had access to accelerated courses. Both girls have lived their entire lives inside the village boundaries. Tired of madrasa prayers alone, they long for math exercises, Nepali stories, and the idea of women scientists.
“I want school, friends, and real learning,” Anjum said.

Khatun nodded fiercely. “We don’t know where destiny leads,” she said.

WUNRN

US aid cuts yank Nepal’s girls out of school and into child marriage | Devex