Examples of Advocacy Materials
- Cover the World with Condoms: Advocacy Pack from Marie Stopes International
- Community-Based Population and Environment, Factsheet No. 17 from Population Action International (May 2001)
- Recommendations: Ten Years after ICPD in Cairo, from the Belgian Platform on Population and Development
- Briefing Pack, from the Australian Reproductive Health Alliance and the Family Planning Association of New Zealand
- Curriculum Kit, from the Australian Reproductive Health Alliance
- A Freshwater Agenda, from the National Wildlife Federation
- IPPF'S Director-General, Dr. Steven Sinding, Delivers Powerful Statement (3 March 2003)
- Twelve Eco-Economy Indicators, from the Earth Policy Institute
- Briefing Pack, from Marie Stopes International
- 2000—A Better World for All: Progress toward the International Development Goals, report from IMF, OECD, UN, and World Bank
- Advocacy Materials, from the EC/UNFPA Initiative for Reproductive Health in Asia
- Photos available from PlanetWire.org: Categories include children/youth, demography, environment, gender issues/(in)equality, health care/clinics, HIV/Aids, responsibility of men, sex education, and women
- Photos available from the EuroNGOs: Categories include clinics, information/education/communication, adolescents, mother and child care, means and services, responsibility of men, gender issues/(in-)equality, peer education/community based distribution, training/education/schooling, families/family relations/marriage, history
Briefing Pack on Population and Development from the Australian Reproductive Health Alliance (ARHA) and Family Planning Association International Development New Zealand (FPAID)
This briefing pack was produced in 1998 by the Australian Reproductive Health Alliance (ARHA) and the Family Planning Association International Development New Zealand (FPAID) with support from UNFPA and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. It is adapted from the Marie Stopes International Publication, Briefing Pack on Population and Development. Writers were: Christine McMurray, David Lucas, and Thomas Schindmayr.
Contents are as follows:
1. Why are population issues important?
2. How policymakers can help
3. NGOs and the private sector
4. Financing population assistance
5. Quality and choice
6. Policies and programmes
7a. Regional overview
7b. View of our region
8. Global trends
9. Education
10. Migration
11. Health
12. The human right to family planning
13. Land, food, and water
14. Enviroment
15. Gender, develoment, and fertility
16. Jobs, income, and poverty
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Curriculum Kit on Population and Development from the Australian Reproductive Health Alliance (ARHA)
The Australian Reproductive Health Alliance (ARHA) released a curriculum kit on population and development and 14 related handouts in January 2002. Aimed at secondary school students and teachers, these materials discuss sustainable development, global population issues, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, reproductive rights, gender equity, and the environment. The kit is intended to complement a series of youth conferences organized by ARHA titled "Planet Without a Plan." All materials are available as pdf files.
• Curriculum kit
• Handout 1: If the world were a village
• Handout 2: World population prospects
• Handout 3: The state of world population 2001
• Handout 4: Population factsheet (from Population Action International)
• Handout 5: China phasing out one-child policy
• Handout 6: The best way to attain population sustainability?
• Handout 7: India copes with a population explosion
• Handout 8: Six billion strong: World population growing astronomically
• Handout 9: Australian Population Association: Population facts
• Handout 10: World population projections
• Handout 11: Gender equality, equity, and empowerment of women from the ICDP Program of Action
• Handout 12: IPPF Charter on Sexual and Reproductive Rights
• Handout 13: Women and the environment
• Handout 14: AIDS epidemic update: December 2001
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A Freshwater Agenda and the World Summit on Sustainable Development
Fact Sheet from the National Wildlife Federation
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Reproductive health: The briefing pack from Marie Stopes International (MSI)
Marie Stopes International has produced 12 briefing sheets on international reproductive health issues. The English-language version is available on this site as a pdf file. The briefing sheets come in a folder, which is also available as a pdf file. Published in 2001, the briefing pack is intended to bring together the latest policy, facts, and case studies from around the world. It is designed for parliamentarians, policy-makers, and agencies and assesses the progress in reproductive health as we approach the 10th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development in 2004. Authors are Dee Wulf and Frances Perrow.
Contents are as follows:
1. Reproductive health
2. International policy
3. Safe motherhood
4. HIV/AIDS
5. Young people
6. Refugees
7. Gender
8. Sexually transmitted infections
9. Poverty and development
10. Population
11. Working with civil society organisations
12. ICPD+10
13. Sources
The briefing pack is available in English, French, German, and Spanish. Requests for hard copies should be sent directly to Karen Harding at karen.Harding@stopes.org.uk. For further information, contact:
Marie Stopes International
153-157 Cleveland Street
London W1T 6QW
Tel: 44 (0) 20 7574 7400
Fax: 44 (0) 20 7574 7417
Email: msi@stopes.org.uk
Website: http://www.mariestopes.org.uk
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Materials produced within the EC/UNFPA Initiative for Reproductive Health in Asia
The EC/UNFPA Initiative for Reproductive Health in Asia (RHI) works together with 19 European NGOs and over 60 local partners towards improving the overall reproductive and sexual health status in seven South and South East Asian countries (Bangladesh, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Viet Nam). It currently represents one of the largest programmes supported by the European Commission (EC) in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in the field of reproductive health.
Besides the provision of services and information to millions of under-served, vulnerable people within the target areas, the RHI has also produced a host of materials, experiences and resources.
The RHI database currently features 107 IEC materials in 10 different languages (English, Bangla, Khmer, Lao, Nepali, Sindhi, Urdu, Pushtu, Sinhala and Vietnamese). Materials addressing reproductive health range from karaoke audio-cassettes, videos, caps and t-shirts, to research findings and training material. Catalogued by type, country, organisation and target group, the majority of the materials are available upon request at http://www.asia-initiative.org/cgi-bin/RHIDatabase.pl.
The Information and Communication Network (ComNet, co-ordinated by the German Foundation for World Population —DSW) has also produced 11 fact sheets on topics ranging from confidential counselling and safe motherhood to peer education and community participation. These are available at http://www.asia-initiative.org/news_fact_sheets.html.
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IPPF'S Director-General, Dr. Steven Sinding, Delivers Powerful Statement (3 March 2003)
Speaking at the recent Nordic meeting on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Dr Steven Sinding, delivered a powerful speech on the challenges ahead.
I am delighted to have this opportunity to address such a distinguished audience at a critical moment for the sexual and reproductive health and rights field. My thanks to Minister Jan O Karlsson and Thoraya Obaid for their inspirational words. I also wish to express my thanks to the RFSU and Sexual and Reproductive Health affiliates of IPPF in the Nordic countries for organising this meeting and for this invitation to speak to you. I think it is a wonderful initiative to bring together representatives of the Nordic Governments responsible for administering development cooperation funds in the sexual and reproductive health and rights field with the most prominent NGOs in their respective countries in this field.
This is perhaps the most challenging time since the modern "population movement" began in the 1960s with respect to reproductive health and rights. I know that sounds like a dramatic way of getting your attention but I am quite serious when I make that statement. Why do I say this? I have five reasons.
1. The perception that the "population crisis" is over. The demographic fear that drove funding from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s is to all extents and purposes gone. It has been replaced by the Cairo consensus: a consensus on a sexual and reproductive health and rights approach, to gender equity, to women's empowerment and to a broad developmental approach to population issues. The Cairo consensus is a great vision but is it compelling?
2. Intellectually, orally, and philosophically the [Cairo] vision is indeed compelling but politically, perhaps, it is not. I say this based on the simple fact that funding to support the Cairo Programme of Action has fallen far short of the commitments that were made in Cairo. As Thoraya Obaid has told us, the community of nations is providing only roughly half the funds that were to have been provided by the year 2000 and the donor countries are doing even less well than that.
3. Sexual and reproductive health and rights as a development theme has fallen away from the centre of the international development agenda. The Millennium Development Goals include some elements of the Cairo Programme of Action, but not the main one: universal access to sexual and reproductive health information and services. Other issues, including some health issues, have pushed the sexual and reproductive health and rights agenda off to one side. I refer here not only to HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases but to health sector reform and the sector-wide approach (to which I will return below). At the same time, many governments and agencies are treating HIV/AIDS separately, as if it were not a sexual and reproductive health and rights issue. I find this astounding! How can one view HIV/AIDS as anything but a fundamental sexual and reproductive health and rights problem? But the fact is that in country after country and in agency after agency AIDS is treated as a separate development problem or at least a separate health problem from the Cairo agenda, notwithstanding the fact that AIDS was prominent in the Cairo Programme of Action. There are several reasons for this which we can discuss in the course of this meeting, and I hope we will.
4. SWAps. Many host governments unfortunately downplay the priority of preventative health services, of which sexual and reproductive health are among the most important. They are not giving priority to healthy people. When primary responsibility is given over to host governments to define health priorities, regrettably, all too often the priorities tend to be for secondary and tertiary health services in high-cost health facilities. Preventative and promotive services, such as those at the centre of the SRHR agenda, often fall to so low a slot in the health agenda that they receive little or no funding at all.
5. The conservative backlash. Finally, one cannot ignore the assault on the Cairo Programme of Action mounted by the United States of America and its allies in the Vatican and a small handful of other countries with fundamentalist governments. These people believe that the Cairo Programme of Action is a radical feminist agenda and that it represents an assault on traditional family values and sexual mores. As we have heard from both Thoraya Obaid and Mr Karlsson, the recently concluded Bangkok Conference was only the most recent and dramatic example of a systematic effort on the part of these forces of reaction to undo all that was accomplished through tortuous negotiation and hard-fought compromise at Cairo.
These, then, are some of the threats to the sexual and reproductive health and rights agenda as it was laid out at Cairo and pursued over the eight years since the Cairo Conference. How can the Nordic countries and others who wish to fight to protect the Cairo agenda be successful? I have several suggestions:
1. Link the Cairo Programme of Action to achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. At the World Bank recently Thoraya Obaid showed very dramatically and skilfully that seven of the eight MDGs simply cannot be achieved unless the Cairo goals are also met. Generally, it will not be possible to achieve the over-arching goal of poverty reduction if the Cairo agenda is not achieved. The evidence is clear: families cannot escape poverty before they gain control over their reproductive lives. As my co-authors and I recently pointed out in Population Matters, to escape poverty couples must be able to exercise control over the number and spacing of their children and to protect themselves from reproductive tract infections and other sexually transmitted diseases. Families that have succeeded in limiting and spacing births are able to invest in the education of their children, avoid low birth weight babies, and generally improve their living standards. Evidence from Brazil and many other countries shows dramatically that fertility limitation has contributed very significantly to reduced levels and incidence of poverty.
2. Link the Cairo Programme of Action to the fight against AIDS. We must show that the delivery systems that are essential to achieving the Cairo goals are also essential to protecting people from HIV. The same systems that enable people to space and limit births and protect themselves from STDs and RTIs are essential to halting the spread of HIV. The family planning movement practically invented behaviour change with respect to sexual and reproductive behaviour and went a long way toward establishing community based services throughout the world. Both of these are essential to the fight against AIDS. Yet the two communities behave as if they had nothing to do with one another. AIDS activists place primary emphasis on treatment and family planners often act as if they had no responsibility for HIV/AIDS prevention. The donors have a major role to play in bringing the two groups together and insisting that they cooperate.
3. Engage the US and other critics of the Programme of Action head on. It is essential to show the absurdity of their "abstinence only" and anti-condom crusades. We must discredit their pseudo-science and unmask their ideological motives. It is essential to demonstrate the truly dangerous consequences of their approach: more abortions, more deaths, more STDs, more unwanted pregnancies and more broken lives. It is possible to demonstrate these things empirically and powerfully and we must do so. The Nordic countries are in a position to provide leadership to prevent other countries from being intimidated by the US assault on reproductive rights.
4. Demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of sound sexual and reproductive health programmes, in terms of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) and diminishing the burden of disease. We need to remind the world of the critical role of sexual and reproductive health and rights programmes in reducing rates of infant mortality, maternal mortality, and low birth rates—not to mention unwanted pregnancies and high fertility. There are few more cost-effective interventions in the health field than family planning and related reproductive health interventions and we must remind governments and reinforce this message at every opportunity.
5. Be strategic. We must select the most critical issues and focus and concentrate our resources, limited as they are, on the highest priority problems. What are these?
1. Young people. We are now, in this decade, experiencing the largest generation ever of people entering the reproductive age group a veritable "youth bulge." How well we serve the sexual and reproductive health needs of this largest generation ever will have profound consequences for economic, social, demographic and even political outcomes in the years ahead. Young people are the least well-served today by governments. With sex beginning at younger and younger ages and in larger and larger numbers among youth, it is essential that we find ways to serve the needs of these young people. Rights are fundamental to this challenge: rights to services, to information and to freedom from disease.
2. Work directly with the poorest and most disadvantaged. This means emphasising programmes in Africa and in South Asia. These are the countries in greatest need, where the largest numbers of under-served couples live and, frankly, where sector-wide approaches work least well. The poorest countries are often those with the weakest governments, the poorest infrastructure and the least capacity to plan sector-wide approaches. Also, these are the countries which face the dual disaster of high fertility and rapidly rising AIDS-related mortality. Good reproductive health services are, simply put, the number one development priority in Africa. Africa simply cannot wait for good governance and effective SWAps. In order to reduce poverty and to dramatically reduce AIDS-related mortality, good reproductive and sexual health services must be put in place—now! In many cases, this will mean the widespread use of non-governmental organisations, often the only service delivery systems that exist!
3. The third priority quite simply is the HIV/AIDS pandemic. I think nothing further needs to be said about that today.
4. And the final priority is the reduction in unwanted fertility and making abortion safe. There are still far too many unintended and unwanted pregnancies, the result of lack of access to high-quality services and information, contraceptive failure, and simple human failings. Altogether too many of these pregnancies result in abortions, a large proportion of them unsafe, threatening women's lives and causing unnecessary and completely preventable maternal deaths.
All of these priorities cry out for reproductive health commodities, the unglamorous work horse of good quality of care. At one time USAID was seen to have an obsession with contraceptive supply, as a result of which contraceptives and other reproductive health commodities got a bad name, especially in the Nordic countries. In Scandinavia you understood quite properly that the "population problem"required a broader approach than simply supplying contraceptives. But the time has come to move on from these old disagreements. The truth is that we cannot defeat AIDS or respond to the unmet needs of 350 million women without a major recommitment to commodity supply. Trying to run sexual and reproductive health programmes without contraceptives, microbiocides and other reproductive health commodities is like trying to eradicate smallpox without vaccines. It simply cannot be done.
The heart of the sexual and reproductive health movement has always been rights. Since 1968 and the Tehran Declaration on Human Rights, there has been a global agreement on the right of couples to determine freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have the information and means to do so. Since 1968 this has been a central component of the right to good health.
Nordic leadership was essential to the invention and promotion of the rights-based approach and it is as crucial as ever at this moment of peril posed by the United States. Please do not fear to lead. Our movement depends on your political courage.
