Women's Health: Rights, Empowerment and Social Determinants
This expert meeting to review the specific challenges for women’s health beyond 2014, brought together experts and officials from 21 countries, UN agencies including WHO, the World Bank, UNDP, UN-Women, and UNFPA, as well as representatives from international organizations, youth organizations, foundations and academic and research institutions.
The purpose of the experts' meeting, organized by the ICPD Beyond 2014 Coordinating Secretariat and the World Health Organization, was to generate recommendations on effective ways to accelerate progress toward universal access to an integrated package of core sexual and reproductive health services, and protection of the sexual and reproductive rights of girls and women. The final recommendations were aimed for both the ICPD Beyond 2014 Global Report and the new development agenda to follow the Millennium Development Goals.
The meeting complemented the ICPD Beyond 2014 International Conference on Human Rights hosted by the Netherlands in July 2013, and the Global Youth Forum hosted by Indonesia in December 2012, by focusing on the health, empowerment and human rights specifically of women and girls.
Drawing on seven background papers and country examples, as well as their own individual experiences and knowledge, expert participants produced prioritized recommendations for accelerated national and international policies and programs for sexual and reproductive health and rights.
In the final outcome participants agreed that the major gaps in implementing the Programme of Action and subsequent agreements include:
- wide inequalities in access to information and health services necessary for sexual and reproductive health and rights
- poor quality of many sexual and reproductive health services
- lack of effective accountability mechanisms and processes
A comprehensive list of specific recommendations were included in the conference report,. Their full implementation would ensure that the health, empowerment, and human rights of women and girls are central in both the ICPD Beyond 2014 process and the post-2015 development agenda.
This meeting was part of the formal UN process to review progress, gaps and challenges in achieving the objectives of the Programme of Action of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).
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