Question

how sexual and reproductive health related policies in developed countries affect sexual and reproductive health policies in low and middle income countries.

Answer 1

Ans) Continuing implementation of the ICPD, completion of the MDGs and the post-2015 global agenda must prioritise equality, quality and accountability in SRHR through actions to:

- formulate and implement health system reform policies that advance SRHR by ensuring that financing, services, supplies, human resources training and deployment, management, regulation and monitoring of SRH services achieve the key elements of the right to health, i.e., availability, accessibility (including affordability), acceptability and quality.

- reduce inequalities by making information and integrated SRH services available and accessible to all, but especially to women who are disadvantaged and/or discriminated against, and to all adolescents especially girls;

- address key determinants of women’s and adolescents’ SRHR, including through, multi-sector commitments to eliminate violence against women and to support survivors and to end harmful practices such as early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation;

- protect the human rights of all to privacy and confidentiality, and to fully informed and free choice, in SRH services; to comprehensive sexuality education, and other SRHR information and education, which informs and enables but does not ‘persuade’ or ‘motivate’; and to mechanisms for redress of human rights abuses as part of comprehensive systems of accountability for SRHR

- develop and strengthen indicators and tracking mechanisms that build health system accountability for reduction of inequalities and improved quality of SRH services.

- Intergovernmental agreements following the ICPD, beginning with the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, have repeatedly urged governments to act on these areas. A multitude of research and, commonly small-scale, experiences exist that demonstrate the feasibility of most of the actions suggested above. This special issue makes clear that such actions can produce results in countries with quite diverse epidemiological profiles and health systems capacity. Nonetheless, for primarily political reasons, the proposals to date for the post-2015 global agenda goals and targets fall short of the comprehensive inclusion of SRHR. As negotiations continue, consensus on the inclusion of SRHR, with emphasis on equality, quality and accountability, at the core of a post-2015 sustainable development framework, can contribute to the development of meaningful targets and a transformative vision for human development that is rooted in human rights and health for all.