Over 300 Parliamentarians from around the world will gather in Istanbul today and tomorrow for the Fifth International Parliamentarians’ Conference on the Implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action. Discussions will focus on holding governments accountable to the promise made at the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 in Cairo—to protect and empower women in exercising their reproductive health and rights. Read more...
Updates
Why Aren’t Women’s Issues on the Agenda at Rio+20?
May 24th, 2012
By: Carmen Barroso, International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region; Originally posted on Grist
In just two months, world leaders will gather in Rio to hammer out a new set of agreements on what sustainable development means, and more importantly, how both rich and developing nations can get there before it’s too late. Day by day, the buzz is building around this historic Earth Summit. But there’s a problem: The big plans being hatched for the occasion — nicknamed Rio+20 — leave women out. Read more...
Plan International: Reach for the Stars
May 22nd, 2012
By: Keshet Bachan, Plan International; Plan International is a winner of the Women Deliver 50
A narrow one-way lane leads to a dirt track ab
out 5 hours south of Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. To one side of this dirt track sits a small one room shack where Srey Pha, her elder brother, younger brother and parents all live together. Srey Pha’s mother, Hean Ra, couldn’t attend school because she had to help her mother with the house chores and take care of her younger siblings. When she was 16, a local farmer who knew her parents asked for her hand in marriage. After a year of steady pressure by her parents, she relented and agreed to marry a man 10 years her senior. She now hopes her daughter will have a better future. “I advise my daughter to study hard, I tell her if you don’t study you will regret it, end up like me. I want her to be a teacher or a health worker”. Read more...
UN Commissioners Aim to Adopt New Recommendations to Increase Access to Health Commodities
May 22nd, 2012
Affordable, life-saving medicines and health supplies with the potential to save millions of lives are not reaching the children and women who most need them. To help change this, members of the United Nations Commission on Life-Saving Commodities for Women and Children will today review and finalize recommendations to help increase access, reduce costs, and increase demand for 13 products. Read more...
World Pulse Shares Voices of Women “Laboring for Change”
May 21st, 2012
By: Smita Gaith, Women Deliver
World Pulse, a non-profit global communications network, is sharing a powerful new series called Laboring for Change. As part of the series, they share five stories of five women from different countries who are calling for increased attention and equality in maternal health and reproductive rights. As World Pulse explains, in the United States, advocates for maternal health and reproductive rights have seen a huge wave of recent legislation prohibiting health services, comprehensive sexual education, access to contraception, and abortion. Read more...