Call for action on gender rights during conflict
ISTANBUL, Turkey — There has been a call for urgent action to include sexual and reproductive health in the immediate life-saving interventions in crisis at the World Humanitarian Summit.
“Too often, sexual and reproductive health and rights in emergencies are overlooked and critically underfunded,” said Tewodros Melesse, director general of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).
“It is a life-saving intervention that protects dignity and keeps people protected when their world has been turned upside down. We need to ensure that there is a coordinated response on the ground which has the same status as other humanitarian responses like food, shelter, water and sanitation.
This is a minimum set of standards for sexual and reproductive health frontline actions.
We urge governments to factor in and to recognise and implement reproductive health into their own humanitarian response delivery.” Reproductive health issues are the leading causes of women’s ill health and deaths worldwide, and these problems are compounded during a crisis.
Around 60 per cent of preventable maternal deaths take place in crises and fragile settings. Women and girls are disproportionately affected by humanitarian crises by being exposed to early marriage, trafficking, rape, forced pregnancies, and complicated pregnancies and delivery.
IPPF is calling for governments to ensure that services are more equitably distributed between conflict zones and natural disasters. In particular, in conflict areas, lack of funding leads to worse sexual and reproductive health outcomes for women and girls. IPPF’s new report The Forgotten Priority: Sexual and reproductive health in crises was launched at the World Humanitarian Summit held May 23-24 in Istanbul.
