Microsoft word - eurongo's 2011 verslag.doc

Eurongo’s 2011 Conference
‘Future Perspective on Development Cooperation: putting SRHR on the Right track’
13 -13 October 2011 Warsaw Poland
Brief report. Moniek van der Kroef
Sharenet is not a member of the European NGO’s for sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights,
Population and Development (the full name of Eurongo’s), since it is not an NGO. As a network of
NGO’s, Sharenet is an associate and thus attends the Eurongo’s meetings.
I went to Eurongo’s on behalf of Sharenet – since Karen ‘t Hooft was not able to attend.
Overall
An interesting and inspiring meeting and worthwhile for Sharenet to be involved in. The meeting
was quite interactive, with open debates. The introductions where not only done by well known
SRHR people but also by ‘outsiders’ who tabled interesting new ideas from Health and HIV/AIDS
perspectives
The meeting was also a great place for networking since several Sharenet members where
attending as well as like minded organizations, and quite some young people from youth orgs. That
this meeting on sexual rights was organised in Poland made it special, since Poland is quite a
conservative country considering these kind of issues. But Wanda Nowicka from the Polish
Federation for Women and Family Planning who hosted the meeting, became a member of
parliament just before the meeting took place, for a liberal Party which happens to be pro-abortion
and pro- homosexuality, so ‘times they are changing’…
Considering Sharenet
I especially looked for issues which could be useful as themes to explore the coming years within
Sharenet as this is the Dutch network of SRHR and HIVAIDS which seeks to connect these
subjects. Up came:
 Sexual Rights within Human Rights  Technical and Social Solutions within Prevention  Integration issues on the road to ICPD +20
Future Directions for SRHR
Vicky Claeys (regional director of IPPF) and Alanna Armitage (Director of UNFPA office Geneva)
did set the scene.
Eurongo’s is very much looking for new directions; on what should be the focus within the present
context of the economic crisis and the strong focus on aid effectiveness, cost effective and
sustainable development. And within an international political environment which is increasingly
conservative and resistant even hostile considering SRHR.
In 2014 ICPD +20 will take place. And in 2015 the final MDG’s evaluation. We know that the
agreements of both agreements will not be fulfilled. So what after that….
Should the SRHR family reframe its work within the Health Agenda? Seems logical, but what will
happen then with needed vertical approaches like family planning supplies etc?
And ICPD has as a problem that it has no reporting system for countries and no deadline… Should
we still put pressure on countries for reporting (seems too late for that);
Should ICPD be a never ending story +25 , +30 etc.? It might be needed to emphasis something
‘new’ or at least frame the issues in a new way.
Needed seems to be at least to rebalance the Health agenda with key issues from ICPD like
Rights, Gender and Youth. But while doing that we have to keep in mind that Human Rights are
not even mentioned in the MDGs; that Gender was mainstreamed but without funding and that for
youth the focus became health for young children (less emphasis on sexual issues).
Vision from ‘outsiders’
Thomas Pogge (Philosophy and International Affairs, at Yale US); Gorik Ooms (Public Health at
Intitute of Tropical Medicine, Belgium) and Gita Sen (Global Health and Population, Harvard
School of Public Health US) were invited to give their views on the future possibilities and debated
about these with those present.
Gita Sen knowing the field, said achievements of SRHR field were that overall the language on
SRHR became more to the point (less Malthusian language), there is more focus on and
involvement of young people; and there were concrete actions on violence against women. What
did not work is that we still work in Silo’s (on SRHR, on HIV/AIDS and on Health Systems too) with
separated budgets and lack of integration. Sen thought that the SRHR field needs to be more clear
in the normative discourse and in programming and needs to move towards integrated
programming. The main challenge is organise inclusive programming. It can be done by starting
with the people: f.e the needs of a young girl who is not aware of separated programs on
HIV/AIDS; Maternal Health etc. How best can she be helped…
Gorik Ooms was talking about the Right to Health and the idea of widening up the mandate of the
Global Fund in the longer run, so it will become a fund for Health or a Social Protection Fund. The
GFATM is in a fragile position right according to Ooms because it is seen as too narrow (vertical),
with its focus on the three infectious diseases. Ooms talked about the possibilities of changing
GFATM. It is already trying to combine vertical and horizontal approaches as far as possible within
its mandate. He sees the agenda for Global Public Goods as a chance for a new direction of the
GFATM.
Thomas Pogge made clear that for the poorest quarter of the world population the situation
considering income and health is more grim then in 1966. Course of it mainly is Globalisation (in a
narrow definition). Intellectual Property agreements (TRIPS) on agricultural products, software and
medicines were catastrophic. f.e Generic medication - mainly produced by India - came under WTO
agreement in 2005. You can fight WTO agreements per medication per country since exceptions
officially can be made for life threatening diseases. This is difficult and no solution for the
problems.
A new idea is nowadays to create a Health Impact Fund. This fund should pay the Pharmaceutical
Industry for products on impact criteria (f.e a blood clotting product which is useful in warm
countries and help to save lifes of many birthgiving women). At the moment a lot of budget from
the Pharma industry goes to IP-ing, lobby and lawers, competing etc and a large part of their
innovation budget is spend on “feel better drugs’ (Viagra and such) instead of healing drugs. The
insentives of Pharma industry and thus the architecture of HSS would change if drug companies
need to compete in impact in order to get money from the Health Impact Fund
World Café Conversations
Through 3 progressive rounds of conversations the conference participants were invited to be
actively involved in dealing with the subjects discussed before and more specific to exchange
thoughts, ideas and experiences considering, SRHR for all, Financing for MCH for SRHR,
Strategic Coalitions and Alliance building, and a Human Rights Approach to
Health/SRHR. The way of working through World Café conversations (Sharenet did use this
method too during the last members meeting) was very helpful to mix experience, with new ideas,
and questions with answers. One thing struck me by surprise. In the Report from the discussion on
Strategic coalition it became clear that people wanted to work on better coalitions with the Health
field, the Human rights Field and with the Environmental Field while there was no mention of the
HIV/AIDS field. I personally saw this as a missed opportunity, The fight against HIV/AIDS is in so
many ways related to SRHR (so much more then with Environmental issues…), but due to often
hindering silo-ing a lot needs to be done to better integrate where possible. This is a challenge we
should not overlook.
Human Rights
During discussions on Sexual Rights within HR, some people worried about HR being such an
‘abstract’ issue: while so many concrete things need to be done on the ground. Others were
fighting this, saying that one should not be resistant but should develop capacity on HR: knowing
laws, knowing what to do in restricted surroundings, being engaged in HR developments, make
sure SR are visible in HR framework, in order to be successful on SRHR.
The workshop on ’the Human Rights Council developments related to SRHR’ fitted very nicely in the
latter option. Moderators were Stuart Halford of IPPF en Sandeep Prasad (Action Canada for
Population and Development). This worked out to be a very concrete capacity-building session
aiming at strengthening the SRHR community‘s knowledge of the latest developments of the
Human Rights Council (HRC):UN political body for protecting and promoting HR. Despite increasing
presence of opposition at the Council, there have been numerous progressive development areas of
 Cutting–edge work on addressing maternal mortality and morbidity from a HR perspective  The historical Council resolution on sexual orientation and gender identity  and recent progressive SRHR related work, by the Councils system of independent experts, Since 2006 HRC created a new tool: the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). In the UPR process, all 192 UN members (countries) are evaluated within a 4 year cycle on their HR performance and receive recommendations on how to improve. Sandeep Prasad gave examples of how ACPD supported ngo’s to make reports on countries records considering HR and showed the road from there towards country to country recommendations through the UPR process. Some recent successes were: recommendations towards Ireland on how to improve the rights of women considering abortion; recommendations towards Thailand on how to improve the sexual rights of sex workers; recommendations towards Lithuania to improve the Rights of the Child considering Adolescents health and reproductive education. Later this year IPPF will bring out a UPR Toolkit. Handouts were  a schematic cycle of UPR and overwiew  and the second cycle of the UPR (which countries will be evaluated in which Year), starting in

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