Interact Worldwide

Gender inequality poses a serious threat towards progress on the Millennium Development Goals, warns CONCORD, the European confederation of Relief and Development NGOs on International Women’s Day.

The European Commission recently proposed that a greater emphasis should be placed on the promotion and protection of women's and girls' rights and gender equality in its Communication on the future development framework post-2015.

For CONCORD, gender issues must be at the centre of poverty eradication efforts.

Education crucial

“Girls education is critical to achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment. We know that girls who receive a quality basic education are more likely to marry later, have fewer, healthier children, and earn more. Quality basic education can have a transformational effect on girls, making them drivers of lasting change in their families, communities and countries.” Says Karen Schroh, Head of Plan EU Office.

Gender based violence overlooked

“Gender Based Violence is one of the most pervasive and yet dramatically under-addressed human rights abuses in the world. Disturbingly, one billion women will be victims of sexual violence in their lifetime, with widespread consequences for individuals, families, communities and economies. We call on the EU to use their international power to shape the post-2015 development agenda to prioritise the elimination of sexual and gender-based violence.” says Ester Asin Martinez,  EU Representative at CARE International.

Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights fundamental

“Gender equality will only be possible when every woman and every man will be enabled to make informed choices about their body, sexuality, health, marriage and whether or not to have children, and when, and how many. When women and girls are empowered and have access to their Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, they will be able to take control of their lives. It is now the moment to work together towards a rights-based framework that puts women and girls front and center in its development.” says Eef Wuyts, International Advocacy Manager at the International Planned Parenthood Federation European Network:

Future development framework

CONCORD believes the new post-2015 development framework can act as a catalyst for progress on gender equality, but for it to be successful and truly transformational, gender equality must be both mainstreamed as well as addressed in a specific goal. It must also be tackled holistically, which means covering all spheres of life, from social issues such as health and education to economic empowerment, political participation, and the power to take their own decisions about their lives. It must also directly address the issue of violence against women and girls, which remains one of the biggest barriers to achieving gender equality.

You can now read a letter signed by 70 organisations from 20+ countries to the delegates of The Botswana High Level Dialogue on Health in the post-2015 development agenda here

2013 will be a challenging and decisive year for Global Health

With this in mind, we are looking forward to working with you during these exciting times.

Let’s make sure that everybody has access to healthcare no matter where they live or who they are.

Click on the film below to see why we take action and how you can get involved in 2013:

Elements of this article are republished with permission by its original authors the UK Consortium on AIDS and International Development of which Interact Worldwide is a member.

We call on President Museveni to drop the Anti-Homosexuality bill immediately.

On International Human Rights Day, 10th December 2012, sixty protesters from countries including Uganda, Nigeria and the UK gathered outside the Ugandan High Commission in London to protest against the draconian Anti-homosexuality Bill currently before the Ugandan Parliament.

“We stand in solidarity with Ugandan LGBTI people against the draconian Anti-homosexuality Bill. It is probably the world’s most harsh and comprehensively homophobic law – even more severe than the extreme anti-gay laws of countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran,” - human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation.

The tabling of this Bill is legitimizing hatred and discrimination. It strikes at the heart of development, and goes against the principles of a fair and equal society.

As long as those with the power to reject the Bill hold back from doing so decisively and completely, they carry part of the responsibility for threats to the safety, security and health of all Ugandans affected.

Protesters held placards including “Human Rights for All” and ” Museveni Drop the Bill” whilst two gay protesters dressed up in prison uniform to draw attention to the Bill which proposes to punish homosexuality with life imprisonment, or even death.

View photos from the demo
Read the letter to President Museveni that was handed into the Ugandan Embassy
Read the letter that was sent to David Cameron
Demo information flyer
Background paper on the Bill

Charities including the UK Consortium on AIDS and International Development, Kaleidoscope Trust, Peter Tatchell Foundation, the Student Stop AIDS Campaign and Interact Worldwide stood in solidarity with friends and colleagues in Uganda to oppose any form of discrimination and criminalisation based on sexual orientation and gender identity and support the right of all persons to live their lives without fear of harassment, abuse or arrest. They called on Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, and Ugandan parliamentarians, to reject the Bill immediately.

The protest culminated in the hand-in of a letter to President Museveni at the High Commission, endorsed by UK civil society organisations.

“The persecution of the LGBTI community in Uganda is an assault on the human rights of all Ugandans and is having a catastrophic impact on that nation’s health. The gains made in the response to HIV and AIDS for example, are now being reversed, with a rise in HIV incidence reported in 2011. We therefore call upon President Museveni to act with urgency to ensure this bill is permanently removed from the Ugandan parliament” said Ben Simms, Director of UK Consortium on AIDS and International Development.

All this week we’ve been pleased to welcome our Interact Country Programme Advisors (CPAs) -

Interact’s programmatic representatives in our six partner countries Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Kenya, India and Pakistan – to  our office in London to participate in a critical CPA Programme Review and Planning meeting.

During the weeks meetings, practical steps needed in order to increase collaboration with our sister charity Plan UK, of which I am also Chief Executive have been outlined.

These include areas in which Interact is able provide technical and operational assistance around adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights – a key theme and vital focus for future work – for example:

• In programme design
• Mainstreaming and results-based follow up
• Facilitation for finding adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights partners (including capacity building support when identified)
• And, support to Plan International country strategies on adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Interact Worldwide is able, and highly motivated in providing this assistance to all Plan International country offices around the world (of which there are fifty), who are interested in adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights activities.

It has been very valuable to discuss the approach with the visiting Interact CPA’s who have hugely detailed knowledge and expertise in their own country specific contexts, to both assess how to further strengthen our technical approach and increase our adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights focus, especially in the six countries the CPA’s cover.

I’ve been very pleased with the outcomes of the week’s workshops and feel real confidence, having seen great enthusiasm and commitment to our efforts for adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights, both as Interact Worldwide, and together with Plan.

The halls of the Royal Society in London were last week filled with esteemed members of the United Nations’ High-Level Panel on what will follow the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) when they expire in 2015.

Panellists include Queen Rania of Jordan to Graca Machel, one of ‘The Elders’ and wife of Nelson Mandela, to various International Development Ministers, to Paul Polman Chief Executive of Unilever.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron is one of the co-Chairs of the panel together with the Presidents’ of Sierra Leone and Indonesia. Hence the meeting in London was the first of a series that will take place in the home countries of each of the co-Chairs.

The focus of the London meeting was on household poverty while the Monrovia meeting will look at national development, and in Bali the focus will be global partnerships. Under this broad banner and with the over-arching aim to ensure that the next global development framework ‘ends poverty in our time’ in mind; the London meeting panel examined issues as diverse as access to essential services, natural resource management, inequality, employment and inclusive growth.

As part of their outreach to development stakeholders, there were round-table discussions with civil society in which I took part as a facilitator on behalf of the Beyond 2015 campaign. Here the panelists engaged with civil society representatives from around the globe and with a range of expertise. I had the pleasure of being sat with people who included Francess Fornah, the head of the school of midwifery in Sierra Leone.

You can see Francess’ excellent recent blog on the post-MDG agenda here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2012/nov/02/maternal-mortality-sierra-leone-midwife

The panelists that we heard from stressed that we need to learn from the experience of the MDGs, both in terms of success and failures.

Specifically we need to ensure that we recognise where, whom and how people have been ‘left behind’ by the MDGs and rectify this. This will require disaggregated data and a focus on empowerment. The new framework also needs to have the rights-based agenda front and center, although we probably need to find ways to more clearly communicate what this means.

From a health perspective, conversation centred on how to overcome barriers to access to ensure that ALL people get the services that they need, as well as ensuring that we’re measuring quality instead of just quantity (of health interventions and services delivered etc.)

Picture: Rebecka (far right), with other members of the high level panel including Queen Rania of Jordan (center)

There was also a push to speak more about ‘the how’ – to make progress in development – rather than just focus on the scale of the problems. In this respect our work (as Interact Worldwide and Action for Global Health both) in advocating for universal health coverage as an essential part of the next development framework has much resonance.

Equitable health financing, and breaking the vicious cycle between ill-health and poverty, has a huge impact on poverty eradication, sustainable development and most importantly in peoples’ lives.

We’ll continue to follow the work of the High-Level Panel on the Post-MDGs and share with them our work on how health can and should be at the heart of the next global development framework.