Brazilian women demonstrated in São Paulo on Sept. 28, International Safe Abortion Day, which began to be celebrated in Latin America. The activists are promoting the campaign "Neither imprisoned, nor dead" against the repression of women's right to abortion, which affects even young girls who are entitled to this right by law. CREDIT: Rovena Rosa / Agência Brasil

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 31 2023 (IPS)

A total of 17,456 babies were born to girls aged 10 to 14 in Brazil in 2021. The annual figures are falling, but still reflect the plight of ruined childhoods and the failures of judges and doctors when it comes to the issue of abortion rights.

Data from the Information System on Live Births (Sinasc) of the Ministry of Health put the number of births to girls in this age group at 252,786 in the decade 2010-2019, compiled by the Feminist Health Network. That is an annual average of 25,278."This country does not take care of women. While cardiology has advanced a lot in Brazil, medicine dedicated to women, such as obstetrics and gynecology, remains stuck in the last century and resists updating. An example is the persistence of curettage, a practice abolished by the World Health Organization (WHO) more than 20 years ago." -- Helena Paro

This phenomenon has ceased to be invisible since 2020, when a string of scandals erupted involving girls prevented from having abortions by judges, hospitals and even authorities such as the then Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights, Damares Alves, during the government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022).

In Brazil, abortion is legal in cases of rape, risk of death of the pregnant woman and anencephalic fetuses. It is also an unquestionable right of girls up to 14 years of age, since all of them are legally victims of rape and their abusers face sentences of eight to 15 years in prison.

But there were judges, even in the appeals courts, who ruled against the termination of pregnancy in girls as young as 10 or 11 years old.

At the base of this iniquity is the social criminalization of abortion, to which many religious people who identify “abortion as murder, as a repulsive crime” contribute, lamented Clara Wardi, technical advisor of the Feminist Studies and Advisory Center (Cfemea), based in Brasilia.

Religious morality infiltrates the State

“The stigma is strong, in the culture, in the family, even in schools. That is why girls are reluctant to choose abortion, even if it is legal. And to do it clandestinely is expensive and risky,” she told IPS from Petrópolis, the city near Rio de Janeiro where she lives.

Many doctors argue that they are “conscientious objectors” and refuse to carry out abortions, which forces the girls to go on a “pilgrimage” in search of respect for their rights in other hospitals and even in the courts.

In spite of everything, a Cfemea survey conducted since 2018 found a growing public opinion against the criminalization of abortion. To the question “Are you for or against the imprisonment of women who terminate their pregnancy?”, 59.3 percent said “against” in 2023, up from 51.8 percent in 2018.

Those in favor of imprisonment also increased, but less, from 26.7 percent to 28.1 percent, reflecting the ideological polarization during Bolsonaro’s administration, which caused the proportion of “undecideds”, those who answered “it depends on the circumstances”, to fall from 16.1 percent to 7.6 percent.

There are “institutional barriers” to legal abortion, an issue in which the State ceases to be secular by subordinating its services to religious morality. The most emblematic case is that of an 11-year-old girl pregnant for the second time in the northeastern state of Piauí, who in late 2022 was denied an abortion by a public hospital and by the justice system.

Taken to a public shelter, she gave birth to her second child in March 2023. In other words, the State acted to remove her from her family, deny her the legal abortion she demanded and force her to give birth, Wardi said.

Damares Alves, a radical evangelical Christian who was Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights (2019-2022) during the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, mobilized her officials to pressure young pregnant girls to desist from getting an abortion, which was legal in their case because they are recognized as victims of rape. CREDIT: Fabio Rodrigues-Pozzebom / Agência Brasil

Ignorance

All this occurs in the midst of “collective failures” of society itself, such as insufficient information on reproductive rights and the possibility of choice for women, especially girls. There is no choice without access to health services, she argued.

“The criminalization of abortion invalidates the legality of the three situations. It is necessary to get out the information that abortion is legal in Brazil and to train qualified personnel to offer the service, without the need for legal action to obtain access,” said Denise Mascarenha, executive coordinator of the group Catholics for Choice in Brazil.

The basic flaw is in the training of health workers, whether doctors, nurses or psychologists, who “do not recognize the violence involved in a pregnancy in girls under 14 years of age,” which has been present in the Penal Code all the way back to 1940, said Helena Paro, professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the Faculty of Medicine of the Federal University of Uberlândia.

Universities, she said, do not train doctors to take care of rape victims, but good teaching would not be enough, anyway, she added. There is a lack of experience in practical assistance to patients, with a focus on women’s human rights, said the physician specialized in gynecology and obstetrics.

In Brazil there are just over 60 medical centers offering legal abortion services – virtually nothing for a population of 203 million inhabitants in which women constitute a majority of 51.7 percent, she told IPS from Uberlândia, a city in the southern state of Minas Gerais.

Only about 2,000 legal abortions are performed each year in Brazil, where it is estimated that more than 400,000 illegal abortions are performed annually, resulting in many deaths as well as complications that overload hospitals.

Judge Rosa Weber seen passing her vote in defense of the decriminalization of abortion up to 12 weeks of gestation, in her last sessions as president of the Supreme Federal Court, before retiring on Oct. 2. CREDIT: Antonio Cruz / Agência Brasil

Medical care that discriminates against women

“This country does not take care of women. While cardiology has advanced a lot in Brazil, medicine dedicated to women, such as obstetrics and gynecology, remains stuck in the last century and resists updating. An example is the persistence of curettage, a practice abolished by the World Health Organization (WHO) more than 20 years ago,” Paro commented.

She coordinates the Uberlândia Comprehensive Care Center for Victims of Sexual Assault (Nuavidas), opened in 2017 at her university hospital. Since 2021, the center has been offering abortion-related services via telemedicine, following an initial face-to-face consultation.

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted the online assistance, also facilitated by the efficacy of the abortion drug misoprostol, approved by the WHO and Brazilian health authorities.

Paro’s activities led to an attempt to disqualify her by the Regional Council of Medicine of Minas Gerais, which accuses her of using her knowledge “to commit crimes” and not for the well-being of patients.

“It’s all upside down,” the physician replied, arguing that she cares for the health of patients “based on scientific evidence” that the Council denies.

The councils, one national and 27 regional (in each of the states), regulate medical practice in the country and several of them acted unscientifically during the COVID-19 pandemic, by approving, for example, the use of ineffective drugs such as chloroquine.

A conservative offensive in Congress threatens to further restrict the right to abortion in Brazil, contrary to what is happening in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay, which have decriminalized abortion up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.

A 2007 bill, called the Statute of the Fetus, gained renewed momentum last year in the lower house of Congress, at the initiative of ultra-conservative lawmakers. Its approval would prohibit any abortion, guaranteeing the fetus all the rights of a human being, especially the right to life, from the moment of conception.

Other measures to criminalize abortions even in the restricted circumstances currently permitted are under parliamentary discussion.

To counteract this conservative offensive, Brazilian women’s rights movements launched the campaigns for decriminalization “Neither imprisoned nor dead” and “Girls, not mothers”, the latter of which is being carried out throughout Latin America.

Feminists are also celebrating the ruling of Judge Rosa Weber, who recorded her vote in favor of decriminalizing abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy on Sept. 22, before leaving the presidency of the Supreme Federal Court and retiring 10 days later.

The highest court in the country, which has acted as a counterweight to the ultraconservative initiatives of the legislature and of the Bolsonaro administration, will ultimately decide whether to rule in favor of or against the legalization of abortion on any grounds up to 12 weeks.

Weber’s vote is in line with the demands of the feminist movement, especially with the strong, early contribution of black women, in advocating “reproductive justice as a tool for social transformations,” Wardi said.

“It is an important milestone in the fight for abortion rights in Brazil” and affirms “the legitimacy of the judiciary in ensuring women’s human rights,” Mascarenha said from São Paulo.

But the current circumstances are not very favorable to her argument, with a Congress dominated by conservative and ultra-conservative groups.

Also because the process within the Supreme Federal Court on the right to abortion is facing indefinite postponement since its new president, Luis Roberto Barroso, replaced Weber.

By Julitta Onabanjo, Benoit Kalasa, and Mohamed Abdel-Ahad
JOHANNESBURG, Sep 21 2014 (IPS)

Different issues will be competing for the attention of different African leaders attending the 69th United Nations General Assembly Special Session on International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Beyond 2014 in New York on Sep 22.

But the central question for Africa’s development today is this: How do we harness the dividend from the continent’s current youthful population?

Solving this issue has never been more fundamental to Africa’s development than it is today.

For decades many, African countries have come up with a variety of ‘development’ plans. But often missing in these documents is how best to harness the potential of the youthful population for the transformation of the continent.

Therefore, strategic investment to harness the potential of the youth population can no longer wait.“African governments must know that efforts to create a demographic dividend are likely to fail as long as vast portions of young females are denied their rights, including their right to education, health and civil participation, and their reproductive rights”

The groundswell for change

Africa is undergoing important demographic changes, which provide immense economic opportunities. Currently, there are 251 million adolescents aged 10-19 years in Africa compared with 1.2 billion worldwide, which means that around one in five adolescents in the world comes from Africa.

Africa’s working age population is growing and increasing the continent’s productive potential. If mortality continues to decline and fertility declines rapidly, the current high child dependency burden will reduce drastically. The result of such change is an opportunity for the active and employed youth to invest more.  With declining death rates, the working age population in Africa will increase from about 54 percent of the population in 2010 to a peak of about 64 percent in 2090.

This increase in the working age population will also create a window of opportunity  that, if properly harnessed, should translate into higher economic growth for Africa, yielding what is now termed a ‘demographic dividend’ – or accelerated economic growth spurred by a change in the age structure of the population.

Reaping the demographic dividend requires investments in job creation, health including sexual and reproductive health and family planning, education and skill and development, which would lead to increasing per capita income.

Due to low dependency ratio, individuals and families will be able to make savings, which translate into investment and boost economic growth. This is how East Asian countries (Asian Tigers) were able to capitalise on their demographic window during the period 1965 and 1990.

The impact of such a demographic transition on economic growth is no longer questionable – it is simply a fact.

But this transformation requires that appropriate policies, strategies, programs and projects are in place to ensure that a demographic dividend can be reaped from the youth bulge.

Seizing the moment

Without concerted action, many African countries could instead face a backlash from the growing numbers of disgruntled and unemployed youth that will emerge.

In the worst-case scenario, such a demographic transition could translate into an army of unemployed youth and significantly increase social risks and tensions.

To seize the opportunity, African states will need to focus their investments in a number of critical areas. A priority will be the education and training of their youth.

African governments must know that efforts to create a demographic dividend are likely to fail as long as vast portions of young females are denied their rights, including their right to education, health and civil participation, and their reproductive rights.

If these efforts are to succeed, this will demand addressing gender disparities between today’s boys and girls especially, but more specifically, addressing the vulnerabilities of the adolescent girl.

Beyond rhetoric

As we move toward the post-2015 development agenda, unleashing the potential and power of Africa’s youth should be a critical component of the continent’s developmental strategies, as reflected in the Addis Ababa Declaration on Population and Development – the regional outcome of ICPD beyond 2014 – and the Common African Position on the post-2015 development agenda.

This can no longer be reduced to election or political polemics. It requires urgent action.

Young people are central to the realisation of the demographic dividend. It is therefore important to protect and fulfil the rights of adolescents and youth to accurate information, comprehensive sexuality education, and health services for sexual and reproductive well-being and lifelong health, to ensure a productive and competitive labour force.

Africa cannot afford to squander the potential gains of the 21st Century offered by such an important demographic asset:  its youthful population.

Edited by Ronald Joshua

Excerpt:

Rukia (in the foreground) recovers after a successful fistula operation at Malalai Maternity Hospital in Kabul (August 2014). Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
KABUL, Sep 2 2014 (IPS)

“The smell of faeces and urine isolates them completely. Their husbands abandon them and they become stigmatised forever” – Dr Pashtoon Kohistani barely needs two lines to sum up the drama of those women affected by obstetric fistula.

Alongside the health centre in Badakhshan – 290 km northeast of Kabul – Malalai Maternity Hospital is the only health centre in Afghanistan with a section devoted to coping with a disease that is seemingly endemic to the most disadvantaged members of the population: women, young, poor and illiterate.

“Given that a caesarean birth is not an option for most Afghan women, the child dies inside them while they try to give birth. They end up tearing their vagina and urethra,” Dr Kohistani told IPS. “Urinary, and sometimes faecal incontinence too, is the most immediate effect,” added the surgeon as she strolled through the hospital corridors where only women wait to be seen by a doctor, or just come to visit a sick relative.“Pressure mounts on them from every side, even from their mothers-in-law. They have to hear things such as `I had five children without ever seeing a doctor´. Many of these poor girls end up committing suicide” – Dr Nazifah Hamra

They are of practically all ages. Some show obvious signs of pain while others look almost relaxed. In fact, they are in one of the very few places in Afghanistan where the total lack of male presence allows them to uncover their hair, take off their burka and even roll up their sleeves to beat the heat.

According to Nazifah Hamra, head of Malalai´s Fistula Department, “malnutrition is one of the key factors behind this problem. You have to bear in mind that women from remote rural areas in Afghanistan always eat after the men. Girls often don´t get enough milk and essential nutrients for their growth. And add to it that they only get to see a doctor when they marry, and usually at a very early age.”

Dr Hamra told IPS that she attends an average of 4-5 patients suffering from a fistula at any one time. Rukia is one of the two recovering in an eight-bed ward on the hospital´s second floor.

“I was 15 when I got married and 17 when I got pregnant,” recalls the 26-year-old woman from a small village in the province of Balkh, 320 km northwest of Kabul.

“When I was about to give birth, I had a terrible pain but the road to Kabul was cut so I was finally taken to Bamiyan, 150 km east of Kabul.”

Sitting on the bed carefully in order not to obstruct the catheter that still evacuates the remaining urine, Rukia tells IPS that her son died in her womb. An unskilled medical staff only made things worse.

“What the doctors did to her is difficult to believe. She was brutally mutilated,” said Dr Hamra, adding that medical negligence was “still painful common currency” in Afghanistan.

In a 2013 report on the risks of child marriage in Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch claims that children born as a result of child marriages also suffer increased health risks, and that there is a higher death rate among children born to Afghan mothers under the age of 20 than those born to older mothers.

Brad Adams, Asia Director at Human Rights Watch, called on Afghan officials to end the harm being caused by child marriage. “The damage to young mothers, their children and Afghan society as a whole is incalculable,” Adams stressed.

Rukia´s husband left to marry another woman so she had no other choice but to move back to her parents´ house, where she has lived for the last nine years. But even more painful than her ordeal and the defection of her husband, she says, is the fact that she will never be a mother.

Dr Hamra knows Rukia´s story in detail, as well as those of many others in her situation. “Pressure mounts on them from every side, even from their mothers-in-law,” she told IPS. “They have to hear things such as `I had five children without ever seeing a doctor´. Many of these poor girls end up committing suicide.” However, preferring to look towards the future, she said that Rukia will do well after the operation.

“From now on she´ll be able to enjoy a completely normal life again,” stressed the surgeon, who also wanted to express her gratitude to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) which “seeks to guarantee the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity.”

Annette Sachs Robertson, UNFPA representative in Afghanistan, briefed IPS on the organisation´s action in the country:

“We started working in 2007, in close collaboration with the Afghan Ministry of Public Health. We train surgeons and we provide Malalai with the necessary equipment and medical supplies. Thanks to this initiative, over 435 patients have been treated and rehabilitated at Malalai Maternity Hospital and we have plans to extend the programmes to Jalabad, Mazar and Herat provinces,” explained Robertson, a PhD graduate in biology and biomedical sciences from the University of Harvard.

“You hardly ever see these cases in developed countries,” she added.

According to a 2011 report on obstetric fistula in six provinces of Afghanistan conducted by the country’s Social and Health Development Programme (SHPD), “the prevalence of obstetric fistula is estimated to be 4 cases per 1000 (0.4 percent) women in the reproductive age group. 91.7 percent of women with confirmed cases of obstetric fistula cannot read and write while 72.7 percent of fistula patients reported that their husbands are illiterate.”

“Twenty-five percent of women with fistula reported that they were younger than 16 years old and 67 percent reported they were 16 to 20 years old when they had got married. Seventeen percent of women with fistula reported that they were younger than 16 years old when they had their first delivery. Twenty-five percent of women with fistula reported that they developed the fistula after their first delivery, while 64 percent reported prolonged labour.”

Meanwhile, thanks to yet another successful operation, Najiba, a 32-year-old from Baghlan – 220 km north of Kabul – will soon be back home after suffering from a fistula over the last 14 years.

Born in a remote rural village, she was married at 17 and lost her first son a year later, after three days of labour. Despite the fistula problem, she was not abandoned by her husband and, today, they have six children.

“I was only too lucky that my husband heard on the radio about this hospital,” explains Najiba, with a broad smile hardly ever seen among those affected.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Women march against the Dominican Republic's anti-abortion law in 2009. Credit: Elizabeth Eames Roebling/IPS

By Michelle Tullo
WASHINGTON, Mar 26 2014 (IPS)

Lawmakers and civil society leaders from over 30 countries are calling for universal access to safe, legal abortion.

The declaration, released in Washington on Wednesday, comes in the context of a 20-year review by the United Nations of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo. That landmark conference called for safe access to abortions in countries where the procedure was legal, while Wednesday’s declaration calls for the decriminalisation of abortion in all countries.“What we know now is that law changes social attitudes.” -- Nepali MP Arzu Rana Deuba

The declaration also anticipates the post-2015 development agenda. Advocates are calling to expand the discussion on women’s health to include abortion rights when determining the next round of global development goals, following the expiration of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs).

“True gender equality cannot be achieved without access to safe, legal abortion,” it says. “In the last two decades, roughly 1 million women and girls have died and more than 100 million have suffered injuries – many of them lifelong – due to complications from unsafe abortion.”

One of the MDGs, number five, does aim to reduce by three-quarters the maternal mortality ratio and to achieve universal access to reproductive health. However, it does not include access to safe abortions in its definition of access to reproductive health.

Advocates are now planning to formally offer these recommendations at a 20-year anniversary summit of the original ICPD. That event will take place in Addis Ababa next month.

“Looking ahead to ICPD+20 and the review of the Millennium Development Goals, the one goal they would not take was reproductive and sexual health for all,” Nafis Sadik, the special advisor to the executive director of UNAIDS and the former executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, told IPS.

The new declaration targets not just the international development agenda but also U.S. policymakers.

Four-decade-old legislation here has restricted foreign assistance programmes from funding abortion-related procedures. Critics say the result is a disconnect between the work done by USAID, the country’s main foreign assistance arm, and the women’s health services offered.

“Regarding the problem of U.S. policy – it’s not just the financial support, but the moral leadership,” Sadik says. “It makes a big difference if the U.S. becomes restrictive in areas of support, if they restrict funding for any NGO that provides abortion.”

Cost-effective and feasible

The Airlie Declaration was composed following a two-day conference near Washington. It was written by representatives from over 30 countries, including health ministers, members of parliament, and medical leaders as well as advocates from the United Nations lawmakers and civil society.

“Our goal is to bring this message forward and build a broader coalition,” Elizabeth Maguire, the president of Ipas, an international NGO dedicated to ending preventable deaths and disabilities from unsafe abortions, told IPS. “Every participant is committed to pursuing action.”

Maguire led the recent conference as convenor.

One such participant is John Paul Bagala, president of the Federation of African Medical Students’ Associations. Bagala works in a hospital in northern Uganda that treated 480 women from cases of unsafe abortions in 2011-12 and another 500 in 2012-13.

According to Bagala, providing access to safe abortion is cost-effective. Treating injuries resulting from an illegal abortion in Uganda can cost more than 100 dollars, he says, while the cost of a safe abortion would be less than 10 dollars.

“As a medical student in Africa, we are taking a stand to disseminate the declaration in our respective institutions,” Bagala told IPS.

“To drive [out] stigma from our health workers when they are still in the training system, to ensure that the women, when they come for service, get the best service they need in terms of safety and quality. We are driving towards integrating the aspects of this declaration in terms of reproductive health rights into the curriculum of training health workers in Africa.”

Ipas’s Maguire likewise emphasises that providing universal access to reproductive health care is not just critical but “feasible.” In the case of Nepal, for instance, decriminalising abortion greatly increased women’s health and maternal mortality ratio.

“Nepal is one of the few countries that will be meeting MDG 5, and what the experts say is that it’s increased access to family planning, emergency obstetric care, and increased access to emergency abortion care,” Arzu Rana Deuba, a member of the Nepali Parliament, told IPS.

Deuba recounted the story of a young girl in Nepal who was jailed for 12 years after she was raped and unsuccessfully attempted an illegal abortion. The girl’s story gained international attention, and Nepal eventually decriminalised abortion in 2002.

“It’s a story of hope,” said Deuba. “After 2004, we had 1,500 skilled providers and 75 hospitals doing medical abortion services. As of 2014, 500,000 women have access to safe abortions, and that’s quite a lot for we are not a big country.”

She says Nepal’s success comes not just in the growth of medical services but in the country’s changing cultural attitudes toward abortion.

“What we know now is that law changes social attitudes,” Deuba said.

“I work at the community level and workers tell me there is no more stigma, that abortion is seen as part of women’s rights, that women are more vocal about abortion … it’s seen as part of the continuum of care. Now women don’t have to die anymore and there is a feeling of confidence and security among women.”

Sex education is expelled from Egyptian schools. Credit: Victoria Hazou/IPS

By Jonathan Rozen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 14 2014 (IPS)

As the world moves closer to the 2015 end mark of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a new U.N. report illuminates how far global society has come, but also how far it still must travel to achieve its objectives.

The report tracks the last two decades of progress on issues such as universal access to family planning, sexual and reproductive health services and reproductive rights, and equal access to education for girls."This report gives us the leverage to take things to the next level, where women, girls and young people will be central to the next development agenda.” -- Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin

“We must work with governments to address issues of inequality, which is I think the greatest determinate in terms of the MDGs,” Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), told IPS.

“We expect that as we move into the post-2015 conversation, the evidence we have today will ensure that member states will see that if they are going to make progress…we must put people at the centre of development.”

Since 1994, the year of the landmark International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo when 179 governments committed to a 20-year Programme of Action to deliver human rights-based development, UNFPA has identified significant achievements with regard to women’s rights and effective family planning, but also a dramatic increase in inequality.

Maternal mortality has dropped by almost 50 percent and more women than ever before have access to both contraception and family planning mechanisms, supporting a decrease in child mortality. Furthermore, women are increasingly accessing education, participating in the work force and engaged in the political process.

Nevertheless, a gross disparity remains between the developed and developing worlds. In a press conference, Dr.  Osotimehin indicated that while the global average likelihood of a woman dying in childbirth is one in 1,300, this increases to one in 39 when evaluating developing nations specifically.

The report also notes that 53 percent of the world’s income gains have gone to the top one percent of the global population, and that none of these gains have gone to the bottom 10 percent.

It focuses on root factors of these problems and the central influences on women and girls’ ability to make choices about their lives. Child marriage and education are two main factors in this respect.

Source: UNFPA

“It is important to underscore the fact that once girls don’t go to school, once they are married too early and once they have children as children, they cannot be equal to men, and they cannot have the same political and economic power as men,” explained Dr. Babatunde.

The effect of these factors is not limited to the success of the individual. They are also important for the development of nations as a whole.

“Education and access to health, if they are properly planned, allow people to live longer, and add value to the development of the country,” Dr. Osotimehin told IPS.

UNFPA does not work alone on these issues. Other organisations also collect information and cooperate to address problems associated with population and development.

“The report is very important for us because it both reflects what we have done and suggests a way forward that we like to think we have helped to inform,” Suzanne Petroni, senior director of gender, population and development at the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW), an organisation which works to identify the contributions and barriers facing women across the world, told IPS.

In 2000, all U.N. member states at the time signed on to the MDGs, all of which are directly addressed in the second ICPD report. They are to be succeeded by the SDGs – the Sustainable Development Goals.

The 1994 Programme of Action was not limited to women’s rights. It also sought to address the individual, social and economic impact of urbanisation and migration, as well as support sustainable development and address environmental issues associated with population changes.

“Ensuring that we have a monitoring mechanism for the implementation of what governments have committed to…that is actually the most important thing going forward,” Dr. Osotimehin stressed to IPS. “We now need to make the commitments count on the ground.”

A key theme in the report is that in areas like South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, where 90 percent of the world’s youth are located, there is a massive opportunity for societies to capitalise on their resources and accelerate their development.

But governments must invest in their populations through education, healthcare, access to entrepreneurial opportunities and political participation.

“Civil society, the media, young people and women’s groups can actually work to, in a very positive way, see what [governments] are doing right, and point out where things are not going well…we are seeing that happen around the world,” said Dr. Osotimehin.

“This report gives us the leverage to take things to the next level, where women, girls and young people will be central to the next development agenda.”

Last week, I had the privilege of attending the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, an annual event that deals with a subject that is very close to my heart.  The summit gathered together amazing people: Nobel Prize winners, thought leaders, heads of state, corporate innovators, and academicians to deal with the paramount challenges of the 21st Century all focused on three pressing dimensions of sustainability:  food, water and energy.

Credit: Todd France Photography, 2012

Clearly these are critical to the future of humanity. Right now, about one in eight of the human beings with whom we share this planet lives without adequate drinking water. Almost that many lack food security.  And nearly one in five people manage without the additional power and options that electricity affords.

How to meet current needs, without compromising the prospects of generations who will follow, is a very complicated issue.

It was encouraging to see so many  brilliant and committed scientists, economists and development specialists working so hard on the innovations and ideas that can help us produce, distribute and use precious resources more efficiently and equitably.

Their work is essential because it will take all of us working with our unique capacities to solve the really difficult challenges ahead.

But from my perspective, it is also critically important to empower the very people who grapple with these issues every day: the girls who dream of a better future as they carry water over long distances, the women who toil over inefficient and polluting cookstoves, and the small farmers who manage to produce 70 percent of the world’s food far more sustainably than larger concerns.

We need to stay focused on solutions that keep these people at the forefront of our decision-making —  because it is their individual choices that will ultimately have a pivotal role in how our common future unfolds. When individual rights are fully respected, and when people are placed at the center of development, solutions have an inherent sustainability.

Something learned from my own country and our Nordic sisters is that healthy and productive societies generate a self-sustaining circle of greater well-being and productivity. Inequality and the exclusion of women, young people, and the poor, in contrast, undermine health, wellbeing and economic growth.

Although we need everyone’s contributions to solve the global problems we face, the full talents and capabilities of women remain untapped in many countries.  It’s not that women aren’t working hard. Indeed, they are working overtime as food producers, preparers, sellers and consumers, as mothers and nurturers, as water bearers and as custodians of family hygiene.

And this is often without the benefit of time-efficient technologies and energy services – or modern forms of contraception, for that matter. This means that women are often overburdened in terms of reproduction as well as production.

The sad fact is that women work more hours than men and produce half of the world’s food. Yet they earn only a fraction of the world’s income and own a small share of the world’s property.

Women are managing to ensure food for so many. Therefore they need proper  training, equipment and rights to land.  They need to be able to participate in the economy and they most definitely need access to sexual and reproductive health services, as related health issues disproportionately affect women – from complications of pregnancy and childbearing to the HIV epidemic.

Gender-based violence takes another huge toll. What if the full potential and power of women were unleashed?  Imagine what they could accomplish.

We need to invest in the empowerment of women to achieve the kind of transformations that can sustain economic growth, preserve the environment, foster resilience and leave no one behind. And we need to invest in sexual and reproductive rights for all, including for the next generations, if we are to achieve truly sustainable development.

Women are keenly attuned to the requirements of sustainability. When they have control and freedoms over their own sexual and reproductive lives, women tend to choose healthier and smaller families that can be more resilient to crises, displacement or environmental challenges, and can relieve local population pressures on limited resources and fragile ecosystems.

That’s why it’s critically important that the next framework for international development – the global agenda that will replace the Millennium Development Goals after 2015 – deals squarely with gender equality and sexual and reproductive rights for all.  These issues go right to the heart of sustainability.  I remain committed to making sure they are not overlooked.

Tarja Halonen, the former President of Finland, co-chairs the High-Level Task Force for ICPD (International Conference on Population and Development). She has also served in numerous capacities in international forums, including as co-chair of both the Millennium Summit and the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Global Sustainability.