Over the years of working at grassroots level, our experiences and expertise in community engagement have made it possible to share our voice at bigger platforms in front of donors and government stakeholders.
Let’s read about the experience of our Executive Director Qaisar Roonjha who recently participated in London Family Planning Summit 2017 and spoke about WANG’s work at the closing planery of the summit.
Earlier last month on July 11 2017, over 600 policymakers, donors, and advocates from around the world gathered at the Family Planning Summit in London, UK, to discuss efforts to reach out Family Planning 2020 Goals and ensure that more women and girls around the world are able to plan their families and their futures.
2017 marks exactly five years since the 2012 Summit on Family Planning, and just past the halfway to mark 2020, the year the global community promised to have delivered modern contraception to an additional 120 million women and girls who want them but lack access in 69 of the world’s poorest countries by 2020. But delivering on this commitment requires very urgent intensified action to accelerate progress to Family Planning 2020 goals and our shared vision of universal access to sexual and reproductive health as laid out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Attaining this goal also obliges all women and girls to enjoy fully, their essential right to decide freely and for themselves, whether, when, and how many children to have as is fundamental to the vision and goal of FP2020.
At the summit policy makers, donors, and advocates collectively announced over $2.5 billion in new funding to deliver rights-based family planning with the focus on better serving the largest generation of adolescents in history and the hardest-to-reach women and girls.
The summit also aimed to refining our focus on lessons learned and verified solutions, while augmentation and deepening our network of associates to bring local action and solutions to scale – specifically for populations that have conventionally been left behind such as adolescents and youth and women and girls in humanitarian situations.
Family planning is future planning. Said Melinda Gates during her speech. She adds by saying “This is a difficult political climate for family planning. I’m deeply troubled, as I’m sure you are, by the Trump administration’s proposed budget slash.
“If empowering women is more than just rhetoric for the president, he will prove it by funding family planning.”
The Family Planning Summit co-hosted by, DFID, UNFPA, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the FP2020 partnership saw many of the now 41 FP2020 partner countries make renewed commitments to accelerate family planning progress. Over 100 new commitments were made including two-thirds of countries making commitments on adolescent health.
Financial commitments announced at the Summit are expected to total at least $2.5billion USD by 2020. The majority of the funding – $1.5 billion USD– has been committed by countries in Asia and Africa. Many of FP2020’s 38 partner countries made renewed commitments to accelerate family planning progress, and four new countries are joining the FP2020 partnership. Download the full commitment summary document here.
The summit also provided the opportunity to pay tribute to late Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin for his amazing work for girls and women around the world. The community appreciated his commitment and dedication towards a healthier world for all the individuals’ particular women in marginalized communities.
FP2020 contributes to the goals of Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health, and the commitments to FP2020 are in support of Every Woman Every Child movement.
As a panelist in closing plenary, I got an opportunity to share our experince of working with young girls in Lasbela and talked about how educating young girls can ensure healtheir and happy families. Our stratigies to use street theater and mobile cinema was highly appriciated by the audinces. I also took this opportunity to ask donors and respective governments to ensure to push Pakistan government to full fill its commitments towards women and child rights.
Being part of Youth Advisory Group at such prestigious and important event I realized how important its to ensure meaningful youth participation that we demand all time at country level and how it’s being noticed once you have skills and opportunities to express yourself.
The summit gave us this realization of doing so much more for girls and women around the world as changing world order and growing problems around the world requires more attention and energies to make sure every girls and woman is being counted and they get chance to decide freely and for themselves, whether, when, and how many children to have as is fundamental to the vision and goal of FP2020.
Youth Advisory Group was established to provide leadership in achieving the goal of youth engagement in the lead up and following the summit, to ensure the empowerment and participation of young people to contribute to improving SRH outcomes, including increased access to contraceptives.
