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Statement at Rountable 5 : Addressing the needs of the most vulnerableImane Khachani, Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive RightsMDG SummitSeptember 22, 2010United Nations, New York Thank you for the opportunity to join this roundtable today. I am privileged to speak on behalf of the Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, an entirely youth-led international network of activists committed to promoting the sexual and reproductive health and rights of adolescents and young people. As the world leaders gather today to assess the progress made, - reaffirm their commitments to the Millennium Development Goals’ agenda, - address the obstacles to achieve these goals - and commit to invest all the necessary resources to live up to their promises ; the faces and voices of thousands of young women and adolescent girls who die everyday from preventable pregnancy and childbirth related causes are here to remind us how the world has failed them. Girls and young women are vulnerable because they are marginalized, Because their human rights are violated and Because their needs are ignored, particularly their sexual and reproductive health needs. They are barely visible in the MDGs, and 10 years later still seldom mentioned in this Summit outcome document. They are poorly targeted by your national policies and programmes, often included in one-size-fits-all strategies that do not speak to their realities and most of time, they are absent in your budget allocations. And so they continue to die - by hundreds of thousands - and to suffer lifelong disabilities from totally preventable causes - by millions… We are ALL responsible of this tragedy and by not denouncing it and effectively adressing it, we all become a party to this tragedy. It is time to take action, concrete action for the life of women and girls. - It is time to eradicate the crime of adolescent girl marriage, because the only place where an adolescent girl should be is at school. It is time to reform your laws on age at marriage, to create mechanisms to enforce these laws and effectively implement them. - By preventing adolescent girls’ marriage, you will avoid pregnancies that adolescents’ bodies are not ready to bear, and you will spare them death or complications responsible of atrocious life-long disabilities. - You will give them a chance to continue their schooling, build their future and consistently contribute to the development of your country. - It is time to ensure adolescent girls and young women are equipped with all the necessary information to have healthy sexual and reproductive lives and to outreach to all adolescents and young women, in and out-of-school, in the cities, the rural and the remote areas. - It is time to eliminate all the structural barriers - laws, facilities’ coverage and user fees - that prevent adolescents girls and young women from accessing comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services, including life-saving contraceptives, with no restrictions. - It is your responsability to ensure that laws, infrastructures and services are in line with your people’s realities and that adolescent girls and young women’s needs are fullfilled, regardless of age, economic or marital status. - It is time to speak about unsafe abortion, time to recognise that this is not a politically incorrect subject to censor, but a reality that kills in silence and that nearly 70 000 needless women’s deaths each year - half of which ocurring among young women - can be avoided by ensuring access to safe abortion services, as provided in the World Health Organization’s publication Packages of Interventions for Family Planning, Safe Abortion Care, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (WHO, 2010). It is time to make commitments and to translate these commitments into concrete actions in your national policies, strategies, programs and budgets. It is time for adolescent girls and young women’s health and well being to be the priority of all priorities - policies, programmes and budgets’ wise - in the lead up to 2015. |
