Delivered by Nina Puri, IPPF President
March 2005
It is my honour on behalf of the IPPF's 149 national Member Associations to address the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) on the occasion of Beijing+10.
We meet ten years after the conference in China – a decade that has seen some significant progress where the Beijing Platform for Action has been carried out. But sadly, in some other parts of the world, there has been less progress and too little improvement in the lives of many women. Indeed, the Beijing commitments are needed now more than ever.
This UN gathering is a unique and vital political opportunity for the global community to reaffirm not only the commitments enshrined in the Beijing Platform for Action, but to take steps forward.
IPPF works on the front line in 180 countries tackling some of the most pressing issues facing the world’s women.
IPPF understands the power of strong and sustained political will and commitment at the national, regional and international levels.
If the Beijing goals are to be met in the next ten years – alongside the goals of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - then political and programmatic efforts must be scaled up at all levels.
Also, adequate resources will be needed. In addition, we must work together to devise new approaches to closing the gender gap in areas such as health, education and human rights – including sexual and reproductive rights.
In the ten years since the Beijing Conference, what remains a constant reality is that women must be at the very heart of international development.
This is reflected and reinforced not only in the Beijing agenda, but also in the vision and commitments enshrined in ICPD - as well as both the Beijing and Cairo Plus Five UN reviews. These two political platforms and agendas are mutually reinforcing in terms of the means, methods and outcomes - that women everywhere have the right to decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, free of coercion, discrimination and violence. Both are committed to a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to addressing the critical issues facing women today.
Women’s sexual and reproductive rights also play a crucial role in reducing poverty globally. As this year sees the five year review of the Millennium Summit and the MDGs, Member States and the international community must not ignore nor underestimate the vital contribution of sexual and reproductive health and rights and gender equality to meeting poverty reduction goals.
IPPF firmly believes that unless reproductive health and rights are strongly promoted and realized, there can be little true progress in reducing poverty.
Indeed, the UN Special Advisor on the MDGs, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, himself has noted; “One of the principal engines for reducing poverty and ensuring economic growth is the empowerment of women. And the fuel for that engine includes women’s access to sexual and reproductive health services.” But tragically those basic needs remain unfulfilled in many parts of the world.
Working at the grass roots level, IPPF Members have seen first hand how lives can be transformed if women are empowered to act on their reproductive freedoms – a transformation for themselves, their families, their communities and the world.
As the UN Secretary General said in the opening of this Beijing+10 meeting, the sexual and reproductive health and rights of all must be guaranteed. Only through such a guarantee will we see an end to the deaths of half a million women from pregnancy related and preventable causes every year; a reduction of the increasingly alarming number of women, especially young women, who are infected by HIV; and a confrontation of the most pervasive form of gender violence – that of sexual violence in all its many forms.
The CSW needs to both reaffirm women’s human rights and fully recognize that their pivotal role in solving the world’s most pressing problems demands the full participation and empowerment of women. We are willing, ready and able to make this contribution. Let the necessary political will and action now follow to promote, protect and allow women to exercise their human rights.