This article is co-authored by Adrienne Germain, President of the International Women's Health Coalition, and Serra Sippel, President of the Center for Health and Gender Equity.
This
afternoon, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will deliver a major speech to mark
the 15th anniversary of the United Nations International
Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), which set ambitious goals
for improving sexual health and reproductive rights throughout the world.
Prior
to the ICPD, the importance of securing women’s health and rights was largely
absent from international development discourse. It took the mobilization—and
action— of grassroots women’s groups from across the Global South to persuade
governments that women’s health and human rights are imperative in their own
right—and crucial to sustainable global development. In response to this
movement, 179 governments agreed to a 20-year action plan.
Since ICPD, we have seen progress on securing the health and
rights of women and young people.
Despite these gains, much remains to be done. Women and girls in many parts of the world still face
egregious violations of their basic human rights, and lack access to the
comprehensive reproductive health services they need to stay healthy: contraception,
comprehensive sexuality education, testing and treatment for reproductive
cancers and prevention, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted
infections, including HIV; maternity care, and access to safe abortion
services.
Recognizing the urgent need for concrete action, more than 50
faith-based, human rights, health, and environmental organizations and program
implementers—including CHANGE and IWHC— are advocating for specific
steps the U.S. can take to fulfill the goals of ICPD. The core
recommendations include:
-
Ensure that U.S.
policies and programs address the real-life circumstances of individuals and
communities being served and ensure equitable and maximum access to services
and information; -
Ensure that U.S.
programs and policies protect and promote the human rights of women and youth,
including their right to decide freely and responsibly on matters related to
their sexual and reproductive health free of coercion, discrimination and
violence; -
Increase the amount of U.S.
funding that goes directly to innovative, local and women’s organizations that
advocate for sexual and reproductive health and rights and gender equality; and
- Re-engage with
international organizations on meeting global goals (such as ICPD) related to
sexual and reproductive health and rights through increased financial support and
enhanced coordination.
This afternoon, the world will be watching for a renewed U.S. commitment
to reaching the ICPD goals, and other related UN agreements such as the Millennium
Development Goals. The
Congress is working on a similar statement of commitment, though a resolution
introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee
(D-CA).
These statements of commitment by the Administration and the Congress now
need to be turned to action – in program implementation, funding levels, and
diplomatic endeavors to ensure the right of all people to make decisions about their own
sexuality and access the services needed to make that right a reality. And we all need to be behind them and
support them in taking those steps forward.
The speech will be streamed live on www.icpd2015.org starting at approximately 2:30
pm EST. A transcript and video of the speech will be posted on this site
following the event.
Tim Sloan, AFP / Getty Images
In a major speech yesterday, the Secretary of State declared women’s reproductive rights a priority abroad. Michelle Goldberg on why the Obama administration is feminist after all.
For weeks, pro-choicers have been despairing over the way abortion rights are being sold out in health care reform. But the speech Hillary Clinton gave on Friday at the State Department, to an audience full of international women’s health advocates, was a reminder of the fact that if this administration hasn’t done much for choice at home, it’s done quite a bit for reproductive rights abroad.
Over the last few decades, American elections have had an even more profound effect on reproductive rights outside the United States than inside it. Unconstrained by Roe v. Wade and a deadlocked Congress, presidential administrations can make radical foreign policy changes affecting access to contraception and safe abortion in poor countries. In fact, perhaps nowhere else is the difference between recent Democratic and Republican administrations quite so stark. Yesterday, after years in which the United States spread its anti-abortion ideology worldwide, Clinton declared that the United States will once again become a leader in promoting reproductive rights globally. “There’s a direct connection between a woman’s ability to plan her family, space her pregnancies and give birth safely, and her ability to get an education, work outside the home, support her family and participate fully in the life of her community,” she said.
Over 20 million unsafe abortions are performed annually. I’ve been to hospitals in cities like Nairobi and Addis Ababa where doctors in ob-gyn wards are forced to spend most of their time dealing with botched abortions.
The purpose of the speech was to recommit the United States to a goal we abandoned during the Bush years–upholding The Cairo Programme of Action, a 15-year old agreement that declares reproductive rights to be universal. Cairo calls on governments to make family planning and reproductive health services available to all their citizens. All governments, it says, need “to deal with the health impact of unsafe abortion as a major public health concern.” Adolescents, it says, should be given comprehensive sex education and reproductive health services. Female circumcision should be banned, and coercive population control jettisoned.
Americans aren’t used to thinking about reproductive rights as a global issue—usually, they’re seen as the quintessential domestic political football. But struggles over abortion and contraception are being waged all over the world, and it matters a lot where the United States comes down. A great many women’s lives are at stake: As Clinton said in her speech on Friday, over 20 million unsafe abortions are performed annually. I’ve been to hospitals in cities like Nairobi and Addis Ababa where doctors in ob-gyn wards are forced to spend most of their time dealing with botched abortions. According to a recent Guttmacher Institute paper, more than 40 percent of recent births in nations including Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, and almost all Latin American countries are unwanted. And, as Clinton reminded us, “one women dies every minute of every day in pregnancy or childbirth, and for every woman who dies, another 20 suffer from injury, infection or disease every minute.”
What’s that got to do with the United States? For a start, Republican presidents since Reagan have been instituting the “global gag rule,” which prevents American funding from going to organizations that so much as mention abortion as an option to their clients. That meant that even though the United States remained the world’s foremost provider of contraceptives, supplies weren’t going to organizations that had the infrastructure to deliver them. Toward the end of the Bush administration, Sara Seims, the director of the population program at the Hewlett Foundation, told me that in many poor countries access to birth control was worse than it had been when she entered the field in 1979. The United States defunded organizations that, in many cases, were the only ones providing reproductive health services in their areas. That meant a loss of prenatal care, emergency obstetrics and cancer screening.
Published January 11, 2010 @ 03:16PM PT
Thursday, I pointed out that police in D.C., which has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the country, are reported to use possession of condoms as evidence of sex work. (Yeah, they can clearly afford to discourage safe sex techniques.) Turns out, the nation's capital isn't the only one.
After being tipped off by a commenter that San Francisco police use an unspecified number of rubbers as evidence of sex work, I investigated further and was shocked to discover that safe-sex devices have been used as evidence in my own hometown, New York — which is particularly ridiculous given that New York City has been distributing free condoms to combat STDs since 1971. Some businesses are even afraid to offer the city's snazzy free condoms because they can also be used as evidence of “maintaining a premises for prostitution.”
(Hello, readers: do you know of any other places where condoms are misused as evidence of sex work?)
Knowing that planning ahead for a night out could be used as evidence against you is enough to make anyone uncomfortable, but most people needn't worry about getting randomly arrested for condoms. The major problem is the impact of discouraging sex workers — which do include men, though women are the majority — from using protection. (Although the Urban Justice Center states that many transgender women, even those who aren't sex workers, fear carrying condoms because they are frequently profiled by police.)
San Francisco police defend the practice by claiming that “a pocket full of condoms alone is not a basis for arrest.” Guess what: condoms shouldn't factor at all into potential arrest for sex work. It's a health disaster.
The mere possibility that condoms could be used against them in a court of law deters sex workers from protecting themselves, putting their own lives in danger and contributing to the spread of STDs — furthering epidemic rates of HIV/AIDS. With enforcement practices like this one, it's no wonder a UCSF study found that only half of sex workers use condoms with first-time clients, and fewer with repeat customers.
In D.C., San Francisco, and New York, the use of condoms as evidence is not specified under law as either acceptable or unacceptable, so the practice has been left to the discretion of cops and prosecutors.
However, the harmful health repercussions of this practice have long been apparent. Back in the 90s, a San Francisco Task Force on Prostitution recommended, in no uncertain terms, that condoms stop being confiscated or used as evidence for prosecution. And in New York, a bill has been introduced (repeatedly … and let die, repeatedly) in the state legislature banning this improper use of condoms as evidence. This time, it's supported by a campaign by the Sex Workers Project, which has seen momentum starting to build.
It's time to stop throwing up dangerous obstructions to practicing safe sex, and start protecting the health of both sex workers and the public. Please sign the petition telling the mayors of D.C., New York, and San Francisco to issue a statement that fighting STDs, especially HIV/AIDS, is their top priority — and that nobody should be afraid carry condoms, because it won't be used against them as evidence of sex work.
Clifton Vincent