The Guardian — At this moment we stand on the brink – we have the chance to ensure that for the first time, women and girls will have the rights and services that they are entitled to.
By ensuring that women and girls have the ability to decide their family size, their futures and their lives, we are able to change the face of the world. At this moment global leaders are finalising the post-2015 framework. The new goals – and the targets within those goals – that will be agreed by world leaders over the next few months will replace the millennium development goals, which were agreed in 2000 to last until this year. It is our opportunity to make the change that we need to see a reality.
Over the past two months, the UN has hosted two annual commissions that have looked at the post-2015 development agenda, and specifically how it relates to gender equality, population and sexual and reproductive health and rights.
In March, at the Commission on the Status of Women, governments at the UN recognised the importance of gender equality for achieving sustainable development. And this month theCommission on Population and Development –which tracks progress of the programme of action laid out in the ground-breaking International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) – gives one of the last opportunities to focus on the link between sexual and reproductive health and rights and development.
Governments have accepted this argument and see how central these issues are in achieving poverty eradication and a more equitable world. The open working group proposal on the sustainable development goals is calling for all countries by 2030 to ensure that all individuals have access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services. This includes family planning, information and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes. It also sees sexual and reproductive health and rights as a gender equality issue, and further says that countries must also ensure “universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the programme of action of the ICPD and the Beijing platform for action and the outcome documents of their review conferences”.
While they may seem similar, these two targets are significantly different and it is only when people have access to the health services as well as being empowered to realise their rights that we will see women who are able to escape domestic violence, girls who are not forced into marriage, and young people who are able to stay in school and become positive members of their communities. Health services alone are not enough; there must be action to enable individuals to understand and exercise their rights.
We have not reached the end of this road. Despite the positive references in the open working group proposal and the outcomes of the two commissions, it is still all to play for.
Between now and September, governments will continue to discuss the proposals for the post-2015 development framework, and there is no guarantee that one, if not both, references to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights will remain in the document. While there is a lot of support from governments from every region, there is still opposition. There are some countries that would like to block attempts to promote gender equality and initiatives that would give women control over their lives. If this happens, we will be failing the 800 mothers who die each day from preventable causes, the 225 million women who want contraception yet can’t get access it, and the young people who are not given the sexual education to protect themselves from HIV.
It is for these women that we need to keep pushing for sexual and reproductive health, and sexual and reproductive rights, to stay in the post-2015 development framework. Women and girls deserve equality and health services, but above all, they deserve to live and prosper. We are on the brink of a global change. We can make that happen. [] Sarah Shaw; Project Manager for the ICPD at the International Planned Parenthood Federation
*Source: the Guardian | Ilustration women and child/womendeliver.org
