On November 10 and 11, we co-hosted the 14th International Dialogue on Population and Development in Berlin. We did so together with the German Development Ministry, its implementing organisations GIZ and KfW, IPPF and Bayer HealthCare. The topic of this year’s conference was ‘Accountability to Advance Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights: Delivering on Commitments Together’, and as part of this, we were happy to launch a new paper on SRHR and the SDGs.
SRHR and the SDGs
Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) is at the core of DSW’s work, so we often use the term and the abbreviation as if it was an easy to grasp concept. But actually, it isn’t. Therefore, DSW launched the new fact sheet ‘Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and the Global Goals’. The fact sheet not only includes official definitions of the four parts of SRHR: Sexual Health, Reproductive Health, Sexual Rights, and Reproductive Rights. It also outlines how SRHR and the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) are connected, and how SRHR fits into the SDGs agenda. Since DSW has committed to contribute to the implementation of the SDGs, the fact sheet also states what we as an organisation advocate for. This is quite a lot of content for a short fact sheet, but we found a clear way of presenting it in an overview-table that forms the core of our four-pager. You should check it out.
At the International Dialogue, we brought together more than 100 experts working on SRHR, representing all world regions. Among them were representatives from government, international organisations, civil society and the private sector. With the conference we wanted to increase our common understanding of accountability mechanisms and how they can be used to advance SRHR and the SDGs. So we looked at long existing mechanisms such as the UN Commission on Population and Development (CPD) that monitors the implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). But we also learned more about new mechanisms like the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), the main body for the follow-up and review of the SDGs, or the Independent Accountability Panel (IAP) that focuses on the implementation of the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescent’s Health.
Our discussions did not merely focus on how each of these mechanisms functions but also on how synergies of the work done by different stakeholders on the different mechanisms can be lifted.
The participants’ recommendations on how to best do this will soon be available together with a more comprehensive documentation of the conference. So stay tuned!
