Summary: By Adrienne Germain(Critical Issues in Global Health, edited by C. Everett Koop, M.D.,Sc.D., Clarence E. Pearson, MPH, and M. Roy Schwarz, M.D. SanFrancisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000). Invited chapter lays out policy priorities for the 21st Century that address the continuing human threats to women's reproductive and sexual health (8 pages)

>>Available in PDF / Available in French

Summary: By Françoise Girard (EarthTimes, 2000). Summarizes the challenges and achievements of thefive-year review of the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing PlusFive, New York, 2000) (3 pages).

 

>>Available in PDF / Available in French and Spanish

Summary: By Adrienne Germain and Theresa Kim (New York: IWHC, 1999). Demonstrates how to use international conference agreements and human rights instruments to argue for access to safe abortion services, and describes strategies that are being used across a wide range of countries to implement such services (44 pages).

Summary: Statement delivered by Adrienne Germain, President, International Women's Health Coalition, before the Thirty-Eighth Session of the United Nations Commission on Population and Development, New York, April 4, 2005 (2 pages).

Of the estimated 45 million pregnancies worldwide that are terminated by abortion every year, perhaps 19 million involve unsafe procedures performed by women themselves, by unskilled providers, or in settings lacking the minimal medical standards. An estimated 68,000 women die unnecessarily from complications resulting from unsafe abortion and countless others suffer from infections, infertility, and other damage to the reproductive tract. These deaths account for 13 percent of all pregnancy-related deaths globally and over one-quarter in some countries. Yet, evidence from countries where women have full access to safe services shows that abortion-related deaths and disability can be virtually eliminated with appropriate policies and programs.

Your contribution will help us support activists like Esther Endalé (right), pictured here outside the Maroua, Cameroun, office of ALVF (The Association for the Struggle Against Violence Against Women), a group co-founded by Esther and five colleagues in 1991. Click  here to meet more of IWHC's colleagues worldwide.