Global Partners in Action: NGO Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Development

On September 4, 2009, the Berlin Call to Action emerged from the NGO Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Development. The call to action  noted that, “Leaders of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from more than 130 countries have come together in Berlin to demand that the international community reinforce and strengthen their commitment to the vision of the ICPD PoA (the Programme of Action of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development), and in particular, sexual reproductive health and rights.”  

The forum assessed progress towards the goals of the ICPD PoA 15 years into implementation of the landmark conference that shifted emphasis from fertility reduction through means of demographic targets to promoting reproductive health through respect for reproductive rights.   The forum’s call to action clearly adhered to sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR), which is still critically important around the world, yet repudiated calls from some participants, including Dr. Karen Hardee, PAI’s Vice President for Research, to address all the components of the visionary ICPD PoA, including broader attention to population and development.  Indeed, “Reproductive Health and Reproductive Rights” is just one of the 16 Programme of Action chapters yet it is sometimes viewed as the only outcome of ICPD. 

The ICPD Programme of Action addressed a range of substantive issues including population and development; population growth and structure; population distribution, urbanization; migration; education; gender equality, equity, and women’s empowerment;  health, morbidity and mortality; and technology, research and development.  Yet, some participants at the Berlin forum actually booed Musimbi Kanyoro, director of the Population Program at the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, and past General Secretary of the World YWCA, when she gave a presentation titled, “Where is the P in ICPD?”   

Karen Hardee presented in two sessions on population and climate change.  The first, Population Dynamics, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and CLIMATE CHANGE: Why Do Linkages Matter?was hosted one day prior to the NGO Forum by the German Theme Group on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights .  The second event held during the forum was a breakout group on SRH and climate change.  Both were well attended and generated lively discussion.   Karen also participated in a breakout group, “SRH and Population and Development on the National Agenda,” which highlighted the split within the ICPD community between those seeking to maintain a focus on SRHR and those wishing for a broader approach to population and development that includes SRH, including explicit mention of family planning. 

In the Berlin Call to Action, family planning was relegated to a footnote, despite continued high unmet need for contraception around the world, which is leaving 200 million women who want to space or limit pregnancies but are not using contraception.  Dr. Nafis Sadik, former head of UNFPA and one of the chief architects of the ICPD PoA, told the audience in Berlin that “one gift from ICPD is that we can look at demographics without fear.”  

Given the pressing global issues facing a demographically divergent world today, such as climate change, poverty, inequity and unmet need for family planning isn’t it time that we as a community redouble our efforts to address – without fear and always in a rights-based way – all aspects of population, including critically needed sexual reproductive health and rights?