Offline: Making it happen for women and girls

Abstract

It was not a matter of forgetting. “There were forces within the UN that didn't want to include contraception.” Dr Babatunde Osotimehin is the Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and doesn't mince his words. He was speaking last week at the launch of the Guttmacher Institute's signature report, Adding It Up. Sexual and reproductive health and rights were “deliberately” dropped by the UN back in 2000, he argued. Those forces are still active today. And they are “more nimble in pushing back”. It's not an argument about evidence. It's “ideological”. Equity and human rights were absent from the Millennium Development Goals. This mistake cannot be allowed to happen again. In the same week that Ban Ki-moon published his Synthesis Report on the post-2015 agenda, it was essential, Dr Babatunde said, that governments invested more in their people. That investment includes spending on health systems. If health systems had been stronger, the Ebola crisis could have been avoided. There are reasons for concern. Women's and children's health is almost invisible in the 17 draft Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), produced by an Open Working Group of the United Nations during the summer. This invisibility has now been endorsed by Mr Ban. The UN Secretary-General welcomed their “ground-breaking work”. Women living in the most vulnerable circumstances may not see this outcome as quite such a “ground-breaking” result.