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Across its programs, the International Women's Health Coalition addresses sexual and reproductive rights and health as an integrated package: services such as contraception, safe abortion, maternity care, and prevention and treatment of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections are buttressed by comprehensive sexuality education and promotion of sexual and reproductive rights. Vertical health services—whether family planning, maternity care, or HIV treatment—are not enough to achieve individual health or societal development goals and do not reflect the realities of women and girls’ lives. IWHC’s commitment to sexual and reproductive rights, together with its insistence on integrated services, sets it apart from most other international reproductive health organizations. IWHC also works with groups in related sectors (education, peace and security, environment, human rights, and development) to ensure a holistic approach to its advocacy on behalf of women and young people.
IWHC's partners on the ground are using diverse strategies and approaches to promote women's health and advance women's rights in different regions of the globe. Their work—like IWHC's global work—cuts across issues and movements, shaped by the realities of women's lives and responsive to the constraints and challenges they face. Despite our broad mandate and our far-reaching vision of social justice and gender equality, there are several priority issues we and our partners have chosen to address:
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| Leandro Vieira dos Santos of Brazil and Justyna Wlodarczyk of Poland share advocacy materials at an IWHC-sponsored international consultation on youth participation, held in Toronto in 2004. |
Youth Health and Rights
There are 1.8 billion adolescents in the world today—the largest generation of adolescents ever. These young people are disproportionately vulnerable and face great challenges to their health and wellbeing. Many are living in societies with weak health systems, few educational and economic opportunities, limited resources to invest in HIV/AIDS prevention and reproductive health care, and strong fundamentalist opposition to providing young people with full and accurate information on their bodies, their rights, and their responsibilities. Across every region of the globe, these harsh realities have focused advocates' attention on young people's health needs and human rights, and have compelled young people themselves to take action. Read more>>
Access to Safe Abortion
Globally, 179 governments have agreed that abortion should be safe and available under circumstances where it is legal. Yet each year, an estimated 20 million unsafe abortions occur worldwide. About 78,000 women, the vast majority of them in developing countries, die from the consequences of these unsafe procedures, and untold numbers suffer severe health effects. Advocates for women worldwide are building alliances to focus attention on the women who suffer, and often lose their lives, as a result of restrictive laws and policies. Read more>>
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| IWHC colleague Dorothy Aken'Ova (left), founder and director of INCRESE in Northern Nigeria, advises Fatima Usman (right), a woman from her community who has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery under Shari'ah law. |
Sexual Rights and Gender Equality
The Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing) Platform for Action put forward the groundbreaking notion that women's right to control their sexuality—the basis for sexual rights—is an indivisible part of their human rights, and that without it, women cannot fully realize their other rights. In practice, however, few countries' laws and policies provide women with effective protection against coercion, discrimination, and violence, and fundamentalist ideologies all over the world consistently target women's sexual and reproductive autonomy. Using diverse strategies and approaches, our partners are working to ensure that women's sexual rights are recognized as human rights. Read more>>
HIV/AIDS and Women
Women worldwide—especially young women—are disproportionately vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, yet few programs aimed at curbing the pandemic's spread target them or reflect the realities of their lives. All of our partners are working to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS, because all of our partners are focused on addressing the engines that drive the pandemic's spread—violence, pervasive discrimination, lack of information about sexuality, and lack of access to health services. Read more>>
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