On September 20, White Ribbon Alliance Global Patron Sarah Brown, Mothers Day Every Day Advisor Arianna Huffington and Donna Karan will host the first annual Women: Inspiration & Enterprise (WIE) Symposium for some of the most powerful women in politics, philanthropy, media, fashion and the arts. The WIE Symposium is an opportunity to highlight the ways in which people from all walks of life can contribute to the global effort to put an end to needless deaths from pregnancy and childbirth. In order to ensure that the symposium includes the next generation of powerful women, the WRA has hosted two competitions to support the participation of young champions for women from our National Alliances and from the United States. 50 Young Champions for Women and 7 National Alliance Young Women Advocates were selected to attend the event.
Updates
The Asian-Pacific Resource & Research Centre for Women (ARROW) Announces MDG5 Watch
August 18th, 2010
The Live & Living MDG 5 Shadow Report is an interactive, web-based report on the progress of the Millennium Development Goals 3 & 5 in twelve countries in Asia. The countries covered include the South Asian countries of Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan; the Southeast Asian countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines; the Mekong countries of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam as well as the East Asian country of China.
10 Ways to Celebrate International Year of Youth
August 12th, 2010
Today, August 12, 2010, is International Youth Day. It's a day to celebrate the power of young people to make positive change for their communities, countries, and the world. Even bigger, today kicks off the International Year of Youth. There are lots of ways you can get involved over the next few months, and year. Click through to read 10 actions you can take right now...
Women Deliver and Partners Plan to Urge UN Delegates to Accelerate Action on the MDGs
August 12th, 2010
Driving forward the momentum gathered from a successful second global conference, Women Deliver is organizing a side event, “Accelerating Action on the MDGs: Delivering for Girls, Women and Babies”, for delegates to the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS). On Sunday, September 19th from 9:30-11:30am, a day before the Special Session begins, UN member country delegates, NGOs, corporations, donors, UN agencies, youth leaders and media will gather in New York City to discuss progress made on the Millennium Development Goals as well as concrete steps to be taken. Read more...
Civil Society Organizations Statement to the Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union
July 20th, 2010
The 15th African Union (AU) Summit began Monday 19 July 2010 in Kampala, Uganda. The summit is addressing various issues, including health, infrastructure and food security. It will also tackle security concerns in Somalia. Pre Summit, members of African Civil Society, comprising organizations working on maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, water and sanitation, gender, youth, human rights, peace and security, and sustainable development issues in Africa, met to discuss issues affecting Maternal, Infant and Child Health Development in Africa. The Pre Summit was organized by the African Union Commission in collaboration with the Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC).
The result of the Pre Summit meetings was a statement by the civil society organizations delivered to the 15th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union calling upon African Governments to work towards improving the health of women. It asks that they enact policies, strengthen health and community systems and accountability mechanisms, increase resources for health, integrate previous commitments, and more, to accelerate the attainment of the MDG. Read the statement here.
Midwifery Symposium at the Women Deliver 2010 Conference
July 8th, 2010
The Symposium on Strengthening Midwifery: Saving Lives and Promoting Health of Women and Newborns took place 5 June 2010 - 6 June 2010 in the days leading up to the Women Deliver 2010 conference in Washington, D.C. Capitalizing on the momentum pre-conference, the symposium convened over 200 midwives and others with midwifery skills, leading UN agencies, civil society, policy makers and donors (multi-lateral and bilateral) engaged globally in strengthening midwifery education and quality of midwifery services. The primary aim was to build the consensus required to make a fundamental push for investments in strengthened midwifery services, including education, regulation and association, as a way to reach MDGs 4, 5 and 6. The result of the symposium was a joint statement: A Global Call to Action: Strengthen Midwifery to Save Lives and Promote Health of Women and Newborns.
G20 Leaders Agree to Discuss International Development Issues
June 29th, 2010
By: Janna Oberdorf, Communications Manager for Women Deliver
On Sunday, the G20 Summit, a group of government leaders from 20 countries, followed up on the outcomes of the G8 meetings the day before that promised $7.3 billion to maternal and child health. The G20 usually focuses on matters pertaining to the international financial system, while the G8 talks about broader development issues like solving global poverty. For the first time ever, the G20 agreed to set up a working group on international development issues, giving itself a formalized a role in helping poor countries.
There were two key paragraphs that will affect the maternal and child health communities in the communiqué that was released by the G20...
G8 Communiqué Commits to Maternal Health, Child Health, and Family Planning; Safe Abortion Absent
June 26th, 2010
By: Janna Oberdorf, Communications Manager for Women Deliver
The G8 leaders have released their communiqué, the consensus reached during the last two days of discussions. As we’ve blogged about over the past days, Canada placed maternal and child health at the forefront of the G8 discussion. As the communiqué states:
“Progress towards MDG 5, improving maternal health, has been unacceptably slow. Although recent data suggests maternal mortality has been declining, hundreds of thousands of women still lose their lives every year, or suffer injury, from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. Much of this could be prevented with better access to strengthened health systems, and sexual and reproductive health care and services, including voluntary family planning. Progress on MDG 4, reducing child mortality, is also too slow. Nearly 9 million children die each year before their fifth birthday. These deaths profoundly concern us and underscore the need for urgent collective action. We reaffirm our strong support to significantly reduce the number of maternal, newborn and under five child deaths as a matter of immediate humanitarian and development concern. Action is required on all factors that affect the health of women and children. This includes addressing gender inequality, ensuring women’s and children’s rights and improving education for women and girls."
Accountability a Key Issue for the G8/G20 and Beyond
June 25th, 2010
By: Janna Oberdorf, Communications Manager for Women Deliver
“You need to keep your doors open to speak to us. You are accountable to the people who elected you,” Lysa John from the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) told the leaders of the G8 at a press conference for the Make Poverty History campaign this morning.
Accountability is a key issue in both this year’s G8/G20 summits, and in the larger context of providing the essential services to all women in developing countries to meet MDG5 by 2015. In order to truly reduce maternal deaths, governments need to follow through on the promises they’ve made at previous international and national summits. As civil society, we need to keep watch. Governments and the international community must commit to developing better monitoring and accountability mechanisms and channels for community engagement that address all the many barriers to maternal and newborn health care if we are going to make progress.
Five Action Steps To Take for the G8/G20
June 24th, 2010
This week, G8 and G20 leaders will meet to discuss how to best spend international aid in order to meet development goals. We know the answer: Women are at the heart of the MDGs, and investing in women pays. Make your voice heard! Click through to read five action steps you can take.
New Campaigns on Maternal and Child Mortality Buoyed by Progress Reported on MDGs
June 23rd, 2010
Updated data on mortality rates among mothers and young children are likely to encourage G8 leaders, who at their meeting later this week will make this health issue – long considered a neglected area of international development efforts – a 2010 priority.
According to the United Nations annual assessment of progress on the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), released today, the number of deaths among children under the age of 5 has dropped from 12.6 million in 1990 to an estimated 8.8 million in 2008, corresponding to a decline in the mortality rate from 100 deaths per 1,000 live births to 72 in 2008 (a 28 per cent decline). But progress is falling short of the MDG target under Goal 4, for a two-thirds reduction in childhood mortality rates between 1990 and 2015, and millions of children continue to die each year at a tragically young age.
Letter To the Leaders of the G8
June 23rd, 2010
To the Leaders of the G8,
Ten years ago, your governments signed and agreed to the UN Millennium Development Goals, including MDG 5 to improve maternal health. With only five years to the 2015 deadline, MDG 5 is significantly off-track. If we are to reach MDG 5 by 2015, the time is now to take action and implement proven strategies and solutions to save the lives of women and girls worldwide. It is time for progress, not just promises. It is time to deliver for women. [Read more...]
On the Eve of the G8: Waiting for the Rubber to Hit the Road
June 23rd, 2010
By: Jill Sheffield, president of Women Deliver, originally posted at The Huffington Post
Prime Minister Stephen Harper couldn't make it to the Women Deliver conference earlier this month, where nearly 3,500 advocates and leaders from 146 countries gathered to support action on maternal health, but thankfully his Minister of International Cooperation, Bev Oda, could. She will surely carry back to Canada the message that rang out from the thousands of voices present: it's time to deliver for women. Invest in women, it pays.
On the eve of the G8 and G20 Summits, Harper should heed this message and consider carefully as he gets ready to unveil the Muskoka Iniative -- hopefully a plan with a bold vision and a significant funding scheme. After the tremendous momentum that has built around maternal health as a key development issue, the G8 Summit should not be a denouement but an important stepping stone on the way to achieving our goal. Read more...
Global Parliamentarians Summit Calls for Funding to Maternal and Reproductive Health
June 22nd, 2010
The 6th Annual G8 Global Parliamentarians Summit was held on 10-11 June 2010 in Ottawa, Canada. The meeting gathered together 100 parliamentarians from around 50 countries representing G8 and G20 nations to discuss the issue of maternal health - MDG5. At the end of a highly interactive two-day conference, the law-makers adopted a strong parliamentary appeal which - as previous years - will be fed into the G8 process and presented to the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, host of the Muskoka G8 Heads of State Summit scheduled for 25-26 June. The appeal urged donor governments to meet the international targets of 0.7 GNI for development assistance, devoting a significant portion of this funding to maternal and reproductive health, including family planning. Read more...
Parliamentarians at Women Deliver 2010 Commit to Turning Dialogue Into Action
June 18th, 2010
“The biggest enemy of women’s health and rights is political indifference”, Jill Sheffield, President of Women Deliver remarked during the opening plenary session. The Parliamentarians’ Forum on “Delivering Solutions, Delivering Resources, Delivering Leadership: The Role of Parliamentarians in advancing Maternal Health” was dedicated to prevent just that and discussed the way forward to achieve MDG 5 in the remaining five years from a Parliamentarians’ angle.
The Parliamentarians’ Forum culminated in a Parliamentarians’ Statement. Amongst others, Parliamentarians called for additional US $12 billion a year to be invested in women and girls and to actively work towards the establishment of a global funding mechanism for family planning, mothers and children with other international donors. The statement urges Ministers to establish realistic and verifiable annual action plans for reaching individual MDG targets with a special emphasis on MDG 5 (a and b) to be presented at the UN High Level Meeting on the MDGs and commit to take a leading role in communicating the societal, economic, political and cultural benefits of investing in women and girls to key stakeholders. The full statement is attached.
Siddhartha Yadav on Young People at Women Deliver 2010
June 16th, 2010
By: Siddhartha Yadav, one of Women Deliver's 100 Young Leaders, originally posted at BMJ (British Medical Journal) Group Blog
Last week, more than 3,000 global leaders working in the field of maternal and reproductive health gathered in Washington, D.C for the Women Deliver 2010 conference. With the theme of delivering solutions for girls and women, the conference focused on sharing solutions that can help us achieve the millennium development goals on maternal and reproductive health.
Young people were one of the focuses of the conference. One hundred young leaders were selected to attend a special youth pre-conference. I was one of them. After interacting with my fellow young leaders, I am amazed by the amount of the work many of them have been doing and its impact in making the lives of girls and women in their communities better.
Most of the young leaders on reproductive health that I met were not from a medical background. This was a bit of a surprise for me. There were maths students, human rights activists, engineers, managers who have been doing immense work to improve the health of women. This made me wonder if we, young doctors and medical students, are lagging behind in advocacy despite our distinct relationship to health and wellbeing. Are we too clinically oriented?
Mobile Phones: A New Tool for Saving Women’s Lives
December 4th, 2009
Cell phones have cut dramatically the number of women dying during childbirth in Amensie village in south-central Ghana, according to an article posted on AlertNet.
World AIDS Day 2009
December 1st, 2009
“The theme of this year’s World AIDS Day is Universal Access and Human Rights. For me, that means doing everything we can to support countries to reach their universal access goals for HIV prevention, treatment, care and support - all the while protecting and promoting human rights.”
- UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé
2009 World AIDS Day message
Women Deliver: A Global Conference To End Maternal Deaths
November 30th, 2009
Women Deliver, a landmark global conference, will be held in Washington DC on June 7-9, 2010 to halt the needless deaths of over 500,000 girls and women who die every year during pregnancy and childbirth, and the four million newborn babies. These tragic deaths are a major contributor to poverty around the world, and can be easily prevented with effective, low-cost investments.
Health Systems are Failing the World’s Women
November 20th, 2009
Despite progress, health system shortfalls and gender discrimination are severely impacting women’s health worldwide, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) report Women and Health: Today’s Evidence, Tomorrow’s Agenda.