WUNRN
Website Link: http://www.womendeliver.org/updates/entry/women-deliver-2010-ministers-forum-statement/
Ministers' Statement Link: http://www.womendeliver.org/assets/Ministers_Forum.pdf
WOMEN DELIVER CONFERENCE 2010 -
MINISTERS FORUM STATEMENT
June 11th, 2010
We, ministers representing governments participating in the Ministers Forum at Women Deliver 2010, acknowledge our collective responsibility to improve the health of girls and women especially in developing countries and confirm girls and women’s health as a human right. We express satisfaction at the progress that has been made so far to improve maternal and newborn health.
However, we are seized by the urgency of the need to overcome once and for all the shortcomings in development policy and programs, particularly the challenges for scaling up the investments in the health, dignity and rights of girls and women in order to achieve sustainable development.
Compelling evidence indicates (Appendix 1) that:
The continuing weaknesses in the global economy in the wake of the financial crisis; the devastating impact on household economies; and the expected confirmation by the High Level MDGs Review Meeting in September that many developing countries will not achieve their poverty reduction goals by 2015, in spite of considerable progress made so far; provide a rare opportunity to match our words with action.
This requires robust efforts to meet the commitments our governments made at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, the 1995 Beijing International Conference on Women, the Monterey Consensus, the 2004 Paris Declaration on AID Effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action, and the Millennium Development Goals (especially Goals 4 and 5).
To this end, we jointly raise an urgent call to leaders around the world to take immediate steps to ensure the health, dignity and rights of all girls and women. The most immediate opportunities to demonstrate our seriousness are the preparations for the G8/G20 Leaders Summit in late June and the United Nations High Level Meeting to Review the MDGs in September; we call on leaders everywhere to publicly announce the steps, within their respective mandates, that they will take to save the lives of girls and women, starting now.
National action plans should:
(i) Ensure that, by the end of 2010 as practicable, national health plans prioritize sexual and reproductive health including: maternal and newborn health, nutrition, family planning, and STI prevention; and make plans, budgets and results to promote accountability and transparency. Ensure that access to reproductive health and HIV prevention, treatment, care and support are integrated at all health care levels.
(ii) Integrate MDG5 Target 5b (universal access to reproductive health) into national development plans and budgets.
(iii) Provide comprehensive and age appropriate sexual and reproductive health education, information, services and commodities, such as condoms and emergency contraception, with the full involvement of young people.
(iv) Invest in the health, education, literacy and livelihoods of girls and women to empower themselves and build the human capital needed for full economic and social development.
(v) Enact and enforce laws and policies on the minimum age of marriage at 18, respecting girls’ human rights and preventing risks associated with child marriage and adolescent pregnancies.
(vi) Ensure an effective and coordinated community response to all forms of violence against girls and women including domestic violence, sexual assault, dowry related violence, female genital mutilation, sexual harassment, harmful traditional practices, forced marriages, sex trafficking, and crimes committed in the name of `honor.’
(vii) Ensure equity and neutrality in providing sexual and reproductive health services in conflict and disaster situations.
In addition to the national action plans, we call on world leaders to:
Annex 1: Evidence for Investing in Girls and Women
1. Women deliver enormous social and economic benefits to their families, communities, and nations.
1.1 The well-being of women determines the well-being of a country.
Decades of research confirm that a health system that
can deliver reproductive health care to girls and women throughout their life
cycle is a strong system that delivers for everyone. A woman’s poor health
often pushes her family further into poverty. Her productivity falls; family
income, nutrition and care-giving decline; and the resulting pressures forces
families to take children, especially girls, out of school to work or maintain
the household. Pregnancy-related death of women and newborns costs the world at
least $15 billion in lost productivity every year.
1.2 Women drive economic development.
Women operate most small businesses and farms; they are the sole income
earners for a quarter to a third of all households.[ii] A woman’s income is
more likely than a man’s to go toward food, medicine, education, and other
family needs. Women’s unpaid work — farming, managing their homes, caring for
children and others — equals about one-third of the world’s GNP.[iii]
1.3 When women survive, families thrive.
Saving mothers saves children’s lives. A mother’s death or disability
greatly raises the chances her newborn and her other children will die before
age five. The World Health Organization says family planning and skilled
prenatal and delivery care are among the six most cost-effective health
interventions possible in low- resource countries.[iv]
2. Maternal deaths are preventable. We have cost-effective
solutions.
2.1 No woman should die giving life.
We have made great progress, and maternal deaths are declining in many
places. But the rate is going up in others, and far too many women still die
needlessly from pregnancy- related complications: at least one every 90
seconds, or 350,000 to 500,000 per year. [v]
Overall health funding from all sources worldwide is up sharply since
2002, however 53 percent goes to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and
other diseases. In the developing world, only US$2.25 per capita goes for all
other health services, including family planning and maternal and child
health.[vi]
2.2 There is global consensus on these health solutions:
2.2.1 Family planning programs: Ensuring access to modern contraception
to every woman who needs it could prevent up to 70 percent of maternal deaths.
The unmet need for family planning is alarming: more than 215 million women who
want to avoid or delay pregnancy are not using effective contraception.
Each dollar spent to provide modern contraceptives saves $1.40 in medical care
costs because fewer women have unintended pregnancies. [vii]
2.2.2 Skilled care before, during and after pregnancy and childbirth,
including emergency obstetric care, for mothers and newborns, can save millions
of lives. In every country, rich and poor alike, 42 percent of all pregnancies
experience complications, and in 15 percent of pregnancies the complications
threaten life.[viii]
2.2.3 Safe abortion, when and where legal. Complications from the
world’s 19.7 million yearly unsafe abortions are a major public health problem
in developing countries.[ix] Three million of the estimated 8.5 million who
need care for subsequent health complications do not get it.[x] Based on
current maternal mortality estimates 30,000 to 45,000 women die needlessly
every year from unsafe abortions. [xi]
2.3 Delivering these solutions requires policy
action:
2.3.1 Prioritize young people. Half of humanity is under the age of 25,
the largest youth generation in history.
2.3.2 Strengthen national health systems that deliver for women.
The care and services that women need will benefit every citizen, family, and
community.
2.3.3 Advance, implement and protect the human rights of women and girls.
If women’s rights are not human rights, then the phrase human rights has no
meaning.
3. With an additional $12 billion per year, the world can
deliver for girls and women.
3.1 Political courage is required. Fighting discrimination
against women challenges tradition and existing power structures, but it is a
long-term investment in more prosperity for all. Programs and laws to address
cultural and political barriers to maternal and newborn health care and gender
equality, can only succeed if they are publicly supported at the highest levels
of Government and enforced.
3.2 Invest in women—it pays. It is not only the right thing to
do, it is sound economics. When women are healthy, they can work. They
deliver for their families, communities and nations. Providing access to both
family planning and maternal and newborn care to all women in developing
countries who need them would cost $24 billion per year by 2015, or double
today’s investment. [xv]It would save 70 percent of the women’s lives and 44
percent of the newborn lives currently lost. [xvi]
3.2.1 The cost of not investing in women grows every year: in 2004 UNFPA
estimated that every US$1 million shortfall in funding for reproductive health
care – including contraceptives, condoms and medical equipment – led to some
360,000 unintended pregnancies, 150,000 induced abortions, 800 maternal deaths,
11,000 infant deaths and 14,000 additional deaths of children under five.
3.2.2 Providing each pregnant woman in the developing world with quality,
lifesaving care would cost an average of only $123 ($43 for antenatal
care; $75 for delivery, newborn, and postpartum care; and $5 for post-abortion
care.)[xvii]
3.2.3 Letting women decide whether, when, and how many children to have
tends to reduce average family size. This will save on public-sector spending
for health, water, sanitation, and social services, and reduce pressure on
natural resources.
3.2.4 Expanding comprehensive sex education and use of contraceptives,
especially condoms, would reduce transmission rates for HIV and other sexually
transmitted infections, lowering health costs and curbing the HIV/AIDS
pandemic.
3.2.5 Girls who have access to education tend to marry later and have
fewer children, protecting their health and enabling them to fulfill their
potential.
Endnotes:
U.S.
Agency for International Development,
Congressional Budget Justification FY2002:
Program, Performance, and Prospects‐
The Global Health Pillar.
http://www.usaid.gov/pubs/cbj2002/prog_perf2002.html. As
cited in Gill K., et al Women
Deliver for Development, Background Paper
for the Women Deliver conference. FCI
and ICRW, 2007
[ii]Gill, K., R. Pande and
A. Malhotra, "Women Deliver for
Development," International Center for
Research on Women, Washington DC, July
24, 2007, pp. 37-‐41
[iii]Family Care International.
(2007). Women Deliver: As Mothers,
Individuals, Family Members and as
Citizens. New York, NY: Women
Deliver. http://www.womendeliver.org/overview/WD_The_Facts.pdf
Accessed 4/27/10
[iv] The World Bank, Investing
in Health, World Bank Development Report
1993, Washington DC 1993.
[v] Murray, Christopher, et al.,
“Maternal mortality for 181 countries, 1980‐2008:
a systematic analysis of progress toward
Millennium Development Goal 5,” The Lancet,
12 April 2010, Early Online Publication,
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140‐6736(10)60518‐1/fulltext
Accessed 4/26/10, and UNICEF, Progress for
Children, A Child Survival Report Card,
New York, Nov. 6, 2007.
[vi]Piva, Paolo, & Rebecca
Dodd: “Where did all the aid go?
An in‐depth
analysis of increased health aid flows
over the past 10 years,” Bulletin of
the World Health Organization, published
online Aug. 25, 2009.
[vii]Guttmacher Institute and
UNFPA, Adding It Up: The Costs and
Benefits of Investing in Family Planning
and Maternal and Newborn Health,
Guttmacher Institute, New York, December 2009
[viii]Islam, Kamrul, and Gerdtham
U.G., “Cost of maternal‐newborn
illness and mortality,” Partnership for
Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, World
Health Organization, Geneva 2006, p. 7
http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2006/9241594497_eng.pdf
Accessed 4/26/10
[ix]World Health Organization,
"Unsafe abortion: global and regional
estimates of unsafe abortion and associated
mortality in 2004," Geneva, 2004, p.
13. Accessed 4/27/10
[x]Guttmacher Institute and
UNFPA, Adding It Up: The Costs and
Benefits of Investing in Family Planning
and Maternal and Newborn Health,
Guttmacher Institute, New York, December 2009
[xi] Countdown to 2015: 2010 Countdown to 2015
Decade Report (2000-2010) Section 2, p. 11, http://www.countdown2015mnch.org/reports-publications/
accessed June 4, 2010
[xii]UNFPA, “Family Planning and
Young People: Their Choices Create the
Future,” New York 2010, p. 1 http://www.unfpa.org/rh/planning/mediakit/docs/new_docs/sheet5-‐english.pdf
Accessed 4/28/10
[xiii]UNFPA, “Family Planning and
Young People: Their Choices Create the
Future,” New York 2010, p. 1,
http://www.unfpa.org/rh/planning/mediakit/docs/new_docs/sheet5-‐english.pdf
Accessed 4/28/10
[xiv]UNFPA, “Urbanization: A
Majority in Cities,” Linking Population,
Poverty and Development series, New York
2010, p. 1, http://www.unfpa.org/pds/urbanization.htm
Accessed 4/28/10
[xv]Guttmacher Institute and
UNFPA, Adding It Up: The Costs and
Benefits of Investing in Family Planning
and Maternal and Newborn Health,
Guttmacher Institute, New York, December 2009
[xvi] ibid
[xvii] ibid
================================================================
To contact the list administrator, or to leave the list, send an email to:
wunrn_listserve-request@lists.wunrn.com. Thank you.