Editorial: June 2009

Daily, the world is confronted with staggering statistics related to women’s health: an unacceptable number of girl-child marriages, women dying in childbirth and young women exposed to sexually transmitted infections and HIV. In many countries women and girls face violence and abuse resulting in gross violations of their human rights. Female genital cutting or mutilation, honour killings, forced sterilisations, criminalisation of HIV transmission all speak to the daily horrors many women face condoned by culture, customs, misapplication of religious norms and legislation.

The World YWCA has, in the last decade, intensified its interventions, programmes and activities around HIV prevention and care. It is now evident that such interventions remain incomplete unless framed in a way that equally respond to sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and young people. Violence against women is the ultimate manifestation of women’s lack of access to their rights. In February 2009, the YWCA held a consultation on sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) with a number of member associations and partners who collectively defined an approach for the YWCA movement to adopt. The proposed strategy guides the YWCA in creating change in our communities and addressing laws and norms related to the triple challenge of sexual and reproductive health and rights, HIV and violence against women (VAW).

With the revised approach, the World YWCA is focusing on comprehensive prevention, comprehensive support and care within safe spaces for women and girls and a commitment to building evidence through documentation, monitoring and evaluation.

The series of regional training institutes on SRHR, HIV and VAW that the YWCA movement is hosting in the next two years attest to our investment in a coherent global response while equipping individual women leaders with skills and tools to deliver at the local level and within their communities.

While the World YWCA makes its own contributions, the movement continues to ask for accountability and commitment towards actions that invest in women and girls, uphold their human rights and end stigma and discrimination. The International Conference of Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in 1994 concluded with pledges to achieve universal access to reproductive health services for every one in all countries by 2015. The Millennium Development Goals echo the ICPD goals and call for a specific commitment to reduce maternal mortality by 2015. Next year, the world will review the commitment government leaders made in the 2001 Deceleration of Commitment on HIV and AIDS. As advocates for women’s health, we must not only hold our leaders accountable for these promises, but also find ways to ensure they are achieved.

In this issue of Common Concern we explore what SRHR means and how member associations, women leaders and civil society can contribute to a safe world free of violence and free of HIV where women’s reproductive health and rights are respected.