DSW together with over 87 European NGOs across 42 European countries joined forces last week to call upon their governments and other like-minded states to express strong support for universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) at the upcoming 11th session of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The Open Working Group will meet 5-9 May 2014 in New York to continue the consultations around specific focus areas from which the SDGs will be developed. Negotiations around specific goals, targets and indicators will culminate in the adoption of the group’s report this summer. The report – to be officially presented at the 69th session of the UN General Assembly- will be one of the main reference texts to guide the intergovernmental negotiations at UN level that will end in September 2015 with the adoption of the new post-2015 development agenda.
Through a joint position paper, representatives from the European SRHR civil society called on their governments to live up to the pledge – made at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in June 2012 – to work toward an aspirational set of Sustainable Development Goals.
The group, who advocates for universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights in the post-2015 agenda, formulated its call around five concrete asks:
- A Gender Equality, Women’s Empowerment and Women’s rights stand-alone goal with specific SRHR targets as well as the integration of these issues through targets and indicators across the framework;
- A specific target under the Health stand-alone goal on ‘Universal Access to SRHR’;
- Addressing Population Dynamics in the SDGs from a human rights perspective and as a cross-cutting issue;
- A specific target on ‘comprehensive sexuality education’ under the Education stand-alone goal ; and
- A special focus on young people and adolescents’ needs through specific targets and indicators across the framework.
See the full position paper here.
