IPPF Delivers Petition at UN: Young people ask world leaders to fulfill ICPD promises
IPPF/WHR logo IPPF logo

For Immediate Release

Contact: Laura Zaks, 212.214.0287/347.563.6408/lzaks@ippfwhr.org

IPPF Delivers Petition to the Office of the President of the UN General Assembly:
Young people ask world leaders to fulfill ICPD promises

New York, March 3— Today the President of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Dr. Jacqueline Sharpe, presented the Count Me In: Sexual Rights for All Petition to the Office of President of the United Nations General Assembly, at the United Nations during the Fifty-Fourth Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).
 
The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) is a global service provider and a leading advocate of sexual and reproductive health and rights. Working through 152 Member Associations in 174 countries, IPPF is a worldwide movement of national organizations working with and for communities and individuals.
 
Dr. Sharpe delivered the petition to Mr. Jamal Benomar, Chef de Cabinet at the Office of President of the General Assembly on behalf of its 179,619 signatories from 190 countries—the vast majority of whom are young people. The petition asks governments around the world to prioritize young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights, including comprehensive sexuality education and information and youth friendly health services.

“It is my great pleasure and honor to present the petition on behalf of IPPF to the UN and to the president of the General Assembly and to ask him specifically to urge all of the Member Countries to fulfill the promises that they made in 1994 because they were worthwhile and will make a big difference for the state of the world’s development,” Dr. Sharpe remarked earlier today during the brief ceremony held at UN Headquarters in New York.

In 2009, IPPF conducted a global initiative, 15andCounting, to raise awareness of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), and the Programme of Action that, in 1994, 179 governments signed, agreeing to deliver improved sexual and reproductive health worldwide. As 2009 marked the 15th anniversary of this commitment IPPF sought to engage young people to persuade these governments to promote, protect, and fulfill the promises they made 15 years ago. The Count Me In: Sexual Rights for All Petition was a key component of 15andCounting.

Given that nearly half of the world's population is currently under the age of twenty-five, the majority of whom live in developing countries, there is an urgent need to ensure that young people have access to sexual and reproductive health information and services.
 
IPPF believes sexual and reproductive health and rights are central to equitable and sustainable development and for addressing obstacles to women’s empowerment worldwide. To that end, IPPF is committed to implementing the ICPD Programme of Action, the Beijing Platform for Action, and the Millennium Development Goals.
 
This year, the Commission on the Status of Women commemorates the 15th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action and representatives of Member States have gathered to evaluate progress and formulate concrete policies to promote gender equality and the advancement of women worldwide.  This marks a momentous occasion for the delivery of Count Me In: Sexual Rights for All.
While accepting the petition and thanking IPPF, Mr. Benomar commented that “Raising consciousness about these issues, particularly when it comes to young people, is something that we very highly value.”
 
For more information visit: www.ippf.org or www.ippfwhr.org

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Haiti Disaster: IPPF Provides Urgent Health Response

 

Contact: Laura Zaks, 212.214.0287/347.563.6408/lzaks@ippfwhr.org

 

Haiti Disaster: IPPF Provides Urgent Health Response

 

New York, Jan. 25 - The International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region (IPPF/WHR) and PROFAMIL, its Member Association in Haiti, are acting swiftly to help save lives by integrating family planning in emergency relief. PROFAMIL’s clinics in Port-au-Prince and Jacmel have been destroyed but staff and community health promoters are organizing mobile health units to bring basic health care, obstetric care, family planning and HIV prevention services to community-based sites, including tent cities and other temporary shelters that have been set up in and around both cities.
 
“Ensuring the implementation of a minimal initial service package for reproductive health will save lives if integrated into the emergency response in Haiti,” commented Carmen Barroso, Regional Director of IPPF/WHR. There are 750,000 women of reproductive age in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area and another 15,000 in the city of Jacmel on the southern coast. At this time, they have limited access to reproductive health services including emergency obstetric care. According to estimates from the Reproductive Health Response in Conflict Consortium, an estimated 10,000 women will need delivery services in the coming month, and as many as 1,500 women will need care for life threatening complications during delivery.  In crises like this, women are often unable to access their usual methods of family planning and the risk of sexual violence and exploitation among women and girls increases dramatically.
 
IPPF/WHR is collaborating with key disaster relief networks and partners such as the United Nations and other NGOs, to ensure the most effective response to the enormous demands for medical services in Haiti. PROFAMILIA, IPPF’s Association in the Dominican Republic has deployed mobile health units across the border to Haiti, to assess areas of need and to begin providing health services. PROFAMILIA is sending rescue units consisting of doctors, nurses, and volunteers with extensive experience working with Haitian immigrants living in the Dominican Republic. They will target their support in the areas of Leogame, Matrissals, Jacmel, Petit Goave and Grand Goave which face many unmet health demands given that most relief efforts has focused on Port-au-Prince. Additionally, a team of IPPF/WHR staff is traveling to Haiti this week to support PROFAMIL as it reestablishes services.
 
For more than 25 years, PROFAMIL has provided low-cost, high-quality healthcare including family planning, early detection of breast and cervical cancer, pre-and-post natal services, and voluntary testing and counseling for HIV/AIDS. Its clinics, community distribution points, and mobile health units provide hundreds of thousands of sexual and reproductive healthcare services to Haitians annually.
 
IPPF/WHR has created a donation center on its website where secure donations can be made from any country. 100% of the money collected through this site will go towards getting all PROFAMIL’s clinics and mobile health units up and working as soon as possible.
 
For more information visit: http://www.ippfwhr.org
 

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Americas Need Canadian Commitment to Sexual and Reproductive Health

The Minister of International Cooperation, Beverley Oda, unveiled the new Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) Children and Youth Strategy on Nov. 20, 2009. It aims to increase child survival —including maternal health— to improve the quality of education and ensure the safety and security of children and youth. In the Americas where maternal mortality rates are stagnating and
teenage pregnancy is on the rise, this goal cannot be accomplished without renewed attention to sexual and reproductive health.

“(O)ur government will help the children living in poverty today become resourceful, engaged and productive adults,” said Oda.  “(W)e can make a difference in the lives of the world’s most vulnerable, particularly young girls.”

Canada’s re-engagement strategy for the Americas would benefit immeasurably from substantial investments in sexual and reproductive health programs, which are cost-effective and have important multiplier effects but have not yet attracted enough donor support.

Read the full article: http://www.focal.ca/pdf/focalpoint_december09.pdf

 

Awards Ceremony Honors Dr. George Tiller and Other Pioneers of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

WASHINGTON, September 28, 2009 – The International Planned Parenthood/Western Hemisphere Region (IPPF/WHR) hosted its 28th annual awards and cocktail reception here this past weekend at the Embassy of Colombia.

The occasion honored the achievements of IPPF Member Associations, individuals and institutions who have raised public awareness and contributed to the advancement of sexual and reproductive health and rights around the world.

Dr. George Tiller, a strong advocate for sexual and reproductive health and rights who was slain May 31, was honored with the Medal of Honor for Outstanding Individual Contribution to Sexual and Reproductive Health. Dr. Tiller’s widow and family accepted the award on his behalf. In presenting the award to Dr. Tiller’s widow and family, Alexander Sanger, grandson of Margaret Sanger noted: “For 30 years, George Tiller stood up to protests, harassment and assaults, even being wounded some years ago in a shooting. He kept his clinic doors open to give a choice to women who never imagined they would ever need it – women with a wanted pregnancy that had gone terribly awry as it progressed.”

Dr. Tiller won numerous awards and honors throughout his career, and after his murder a special fund was created in his memory: The George R. Tiller, M.D., Memorial Fund for the Advancement of Women’s Health.

Other awards were handed out at the reception:

  • IPPF/WHR Special Awards recognizing the achievements of IPPF Member Associations in three key areas:
    • Outstanding Sexual and Reproductive Health Services: MEXFAM (México)
    • Outstanding Program Sustainability and Resource Development: CIES, Centro de Investigación Educación y Servicios (Bolivia)
    • Outstanding Contribution Made in Addressing the Regional Condom Gap: PROFAMIL, Association pour la promotion de la Famille Haïtienne (Haïti)
  • WestWind Awards: with funding from the WestWind Foundation, to honor excellence in IPPF’s five strategic areas (Advocacy, HIV/AIDS, Adolescents, Access and Safe Abortion).
    • Advocacy: Centro Ecuatoriano para la Promocion y Accion de la Mujer CEPAM, (Ecuador)
    • HIV/AIDS: CIES, Centro de Educación, Investigación y servicios (Bolivia)
    • Adolescents: Asociación Demográfica Salvadoreña, (El Salvador)
    • Access: Foundation for the Promotion of Responsible Parenthood (Aruba)
    • Safe Abortion: INPPARES (Perú)
UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY ADOPTS RESOLUTION FOR NEW UN WOMEN’S AGENCY

Contact:
Laura Zaks, IPPF/WHR
Tel. (212) 214-0287
Email: lzaks@ippfwhr.org
 

UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY ADOPTS RESOLUTION FOR NEW UN WOMEN’S AGENCY

On Monday, September 14, 2009 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to create a new UN agency for women. This is a landmark victory following significant efforts by the GEAR campaign, a coalition of more than 300 organizations, including the International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region, (IPPF/WHR), to create an independent, women-specific UN agency with adequate stature, resources, operational capacity in the field, and high level leadership to drive the agenda of gender equality. The agency is to be created in early 2010, during the fifteen anniversary year of the historic UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.  Once created, the new women's agency will be led by an Under Secretary General, the third highest ranking position within the UN system.

“This is great news for the women of the world. We all hope that quick action will be taken by the Secretariat to follow up, including the Secretary General’s commitment to the rapid appointment of an Under Secretary General to lead the entity and to ensure a smooth transition process,” said Carmen Barroso, Regional Director of IPPF/WHR.

The UN has several small under-resourced agencies focused on women’s issues and other larger agencies that do some important work on gender equality, but it is a small part of their mandate, and often receives low priority.  “The formation of this agency creates greater synergies and support across the UN system for women and girls and gender equality, including matters related to HIV/AIDS, political participation, and economic empowerment,” Barroso added.

Strengthening the UN’s gender equality architecture is fundamental to financing for gender equality and for development more broadly.  It will enable the UN and its member states to deliver on their promises to advance gender equality and women’s rights, which are essential components of development at the global and country levels.
 

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The Women’s Crusade

I applaud Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn for their remarkable work of highlighting the enormous multiplier effect that the empowerment of women has on families and entire communities. Their efforts have brought to life the dynamic stories of so many girls and women in developing countries who have overcome unthinkable hardship. Yet I was struck by the lack of attention paid to Latin America and the Caribbean in “The Women’s Crusade.” Latin America and the Caribbean is a region of extreme contrasts. Its relative economic prosperity often masks a vast inequality — the greatest degree of disparity between rich and poor in the world, which has significant implications for women. Thirty-five percent of women in the region give birth before the age of 20 and in rural areas that number jumps to 40 to 60 percent. It is the only region in the world where births to adolescent mothers represent the largest fraction of total births.

CARMEN BARROSO
Regional Director, International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere
New York

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06letters-t-001.html?_r=2&ref=magazine

A Society Plagued With Discrimination

In many parts of the world women and girls are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS, particularly poor women in marginalized communities. Discrimination, poverty, and marginalization are drivers of the HIV epidemic as much as the specific social behaviors that typically lead to infection.

From the onset of the AIDS epidemic, stigma and discrimination have been recognized as one of the major barriers to accessing HIV prevention, treatment, and care and support programs. What is less acknowledged is that gender inequality continues to fuel HIV transmission and women, particularly young women and girls, are at serious risk.  HIV/AIDS is a preventable disease. We have the knowledge and information to prevent it, and yet its prevalence continues to spread largely because our society is plagued with discrimination.

In the United States, a quarter of all new HIV infections are among women, and women of color are particularly affected by the epidemic. The Center for Disease Control reports that HIV/AIDS was the leading cause of death for black women aged 25-34 years in 2004 – the most recent year for which such data is available. The rate of infection has continued to increase among women, particularly among African American and Latina women.

Around the world similar trends are visible.  Latin America and the Caribbean, a region plagued by inequality, is no exception.  While often overlooked within the global AIDS debate, the Latin American and Caribbean region is at a crucial tipping point where prevention efforts and access to HIV/AIDS treatment could determine the future of the epidemic. The increase in the number of women living with HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean is particularly alarming. In twenty-one out of twenty-three countries in the region for which UNFPA data is available, the number of women fifteen years of age and older that are living with HIV has risen and in some instances this rate has nearly doubled since 2001.

Lack of comprehensive sexuality education, misconceptions about HIV/AIDS, homophobia, gender inequality, gender-based violence, sexism and other harmful social and cultural norms are all factors in the spread and the impact of HIV/AIDS. This is particularly true for younger women who may be less likely to be able to negotiate contraceptives usage and mutual respect within relationships.

At one antenatal site in Colombia, 72 percent of women who tested HIV positive reported being in stable relationships. Prevention programs often neglect telling women that a stable relationship is no guarantee against infections. Actually the infamous ideological propaganda of the ABC actually gave the impression that being faithful was one of the major prevention strategies.

While the connection between discrimination and HIV is clear, we have not seen the financial investments or political will that are needed for halting the spread of HIV/AIDS. We need greater investments in women and girls and in public health interventions that successfully tackle the root causes of gender inequality and poverty. Governments have failed to address the complex socioeconomic problems that fuel the epidemic. Specific interventions that are urgently needed are access to high-quality comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services, comprehensive sexuality education, and stopping violence against women. If governments invest in these three things, and women and girls’ empowerment is placed at the center of the HIV/AIDS response, the epidemic can be reversed.

http://www.conversationsforabetterworld.com/2009/08/a-society-plagued-with-discrimination/

 

 

IRIN examines 'dramatic plunge' in family planning international donor funding

IRIN examines how a "dramatic plunge" in international donor funding for family planning could undermine other health- and humanitarian-related goals, including fighting poverty and hunger. About 200 million women do not have access to contraception, which could cause a surge in the world's population leading to a reversal of humanitarian gains, according to some experts.

IRIN reports, "The largest amount earmarked for family planning since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo was in 1995, with $723 million committed, remaining above $600 million for all but one year to 1999. The latest estimate, for 2007, is about $338 million." Carmen Barroso, western hemisphere director at the International Planned Parenthood Federation, said, "In one sense the issue is a victim of its own success … enormous progress in certain countries, regions, and segments of the population" distracted from other areas of the world in need of family planning services.

"The difficulty of course is that every year more young women are ageing into their reproductive years and they would not have heard information campaigns that were done 10 years ago... It used to be that when you arrived in a developing country you would see billboards or hear radio spots advocating family planning; now all you see are HIV/AIDS billboards. That's where all the money went," according to Stan Bernstein, a senior demographer at the U.N. Population Fund.

He said family planning was originally omitted from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) because reproductive health and issues about women's rights were thought to be too controversial. Universal access to family planning by 2015 is now included under the maternal health MDG, but its absence at the start slowed things down.

The article includes comment from other experts and examines how the lower family planning funding might affect global climate change goals (7/10).

Help for Family Planning

To the Editor:

Re “Would You Let This Girl Drown?” (column, July 9)

I wholeheartedly agree with Nicholas D. Kristof that we should focus on successes when seeking support for humanitarian causes.

Significant achievements have been made in the area of family planning, for example, which over recent decades have led to improved living standards and greater opportunities for education and economic growth. And while it has been demonstrated that family planning is highly cost-effective, donor interest has not always kept pace.

Clearly, there is an urgent need for greater assistance to family planning programs in the developing world. But given that investments in family planning have already proved to be a powerful health intervention, saving millions of women’s lives and spurring economic development, targeting donor audiences should focus on scaling up such lifesaving interventions.

Carmen Barroso
Regional Director
International Planned Parenthood Federation/
Western Hemisphere Region
New York, July 10, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/opinion/lweb16kristof.html?_r=2

Hate Speech Brings Down a Bull Moose

During the election campaign of 1912, a mentally-unbalanced man fired a shot at Theodore Roosevelt, the candidate of the Bull Moose Party, at a rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The bullet was slowed by TR’s lengthy speech, which he had double folded in his pocket, and by his eyeglasses case, nevertheless the bullet entered his body and he was bleeding profusely. Roosevelt declined to seek immediate medical attention and mounted the podium, announcing that he had been shot but that “it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”

A minute later, Roosevelt delivered the following lines about his would-be assassin.

Now, friends, of course, I do not know, as I say, anything about him; but it is a very natural thing that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful mendacity and abuse that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers in the interest of not only Mr. Debs but of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Taft.

Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man of my party who attacks with such foul slander and abuse any opponent of any other party; and now I wish to say seriously to all the daily newspapers, to the Republicans, the Democrat, and Socialist parties, that they cannot, month in month out and year in and year out, make the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not expect that brutal, violent natures, or brutal and violent characters, especially when the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind; they cannot expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.

These words bring to mind the mendacity, abuse and foul slander that were heaped upon Dr. George Tiller by the Right Wing talk show machine, most prominently by Bill O’Reilly, but by others as well. O’Reilly called Dr. Tiller a “baby killer,” who has “blood on his hands” and who is guilty of what O’Reilly called “Nazi stuff.” Others in the Right Wing routinely call abortion a “Holocaust.”

Bill O’Reilly and his cohorts of hate cannot expect that “not very strong minds … will be unaffected” by their inflammatory language.

Truly delusional or deranged persons need little of this sort of “foul slander” to pick up a gun in order to prevent what they are told is a Holocaust. Those with weaker minds and constitutions, need more instigation, which is what the daily litany of hate, intolerance and mendacity that Right Wing talk shows provide. They also provide a justification for murder – that murdering a doctor is justifiable homicide, preventing a greater evil, saving innocent lives. In this case, homicide isn’t just justifiable, it is as necessary and imperative as bombing Auschwitz.

Delusional people often commit assassinations---Hinckley shooting Reagan to impress Jody Foster, for example. But an ordinary human mind, even a not very strong one, needs to be inflamed to commit the deed.  Murder is a powerful taboo, but it can be overridden by the sort of bile that TR decried in 1912.

The Right Wing talk show juggernaut is an operation that would make Joseph Goebbels or the KKK proud – first dehumanizing the enemy, as the Nazis did the Jews and as the KKK did the black man, then dramatizing their threat to the home and hearth, and finally inciting the weak, in carefully coded and deniable language, saying that whatever happens to the enemy he brought on himself.

Those defending or excusing the murder of Dr. Tiller adduce a perverse variation on the civil obedience argument of Gandhi and King and Thoreau---murder for a higher principle. They press that principle further to say that it was necessary to kill the doctor in order to save lives---the lives of unborn children he might have aborted.  This is to adapt the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Greater Good justification (we dropped the bombs to end the war to save American and Japanese lives, as many as a million and more) to the abortion issue.

General George S. Patton used to give incredibly bloodthirsty speeches to his men in order to inflame them to kill in battle, believing that it was necessary to get men's passions up in order to induce them to commit murder.  So the atrocities they committed in war seemed to them condign revenge and (as with the murder of an abortion doctor) a morally justified preventative measure.  In his famous ”Blood and Guts” speech to his Third Army on the eve of D-Day, Patton said the following:

We're not going to just shoot the […], we're going to rip out their living […] and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun […] by the bushel-[…]-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts.”

Scott Roeder, the accused murder of Dr. Tiller, upon hearing that Dr. Tiller’s clinic would not reopen, said the closure would mean "no more slicing and dicing of the unborn child in the mother's womb and no more needles of poison into the baby's heart to stop the heart from beating…." I wonder which Right Wing Patton he heard that from.  

Alexander Sanger is Chair of the International Planned Parenthood Council and the grandson of Margaret Sanger, founder of the birth control movement more than eighty years ago.

 

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/reader-diaries/2009/06/30/hate-speech-brings-down-a-bull-moose