The delay to take positive action has cost thousands of women’s lives; and continues to restrict access to holistic healthcare for African women and girls. Today, we stand together with women and girls all across Africa saying NO to further delay and YES to affirmative action towards recognition, respect, protection, and fulfilment of women’s sexual and reproductive rights.
By defunding Planned Parenthood, the Komen Foundation publicly proclaims that these women no longer matter; that women’s health is no longer a priority for them. This move only serves to further endanger women’s lives by severely restricting their access to healthcare, based on arbitrary reasoning and weak justifications.
The Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR) joins the world in commemorating the centennial year of International Women’s Day. At a time when reproductive and sexual rights continue to be systematically violated and denied as universal, indivisible human rights around the world, it is urgent that we take decisive action to mobilise within and beyond our communities for long-lasting transformative changes that advance the cause for sexual and reproductive justice for all.
WGNRR urges the jury presiding over the Cairns abortion case to affirm principles of justice, recall the national and international commitments of Australia to uphold women’s human rights, and unconditionally drop all criminal charges related to the ‘induced miscarriage’. WGNRR urgently calls on the national, state and territorial governments of Australia-and around the world-to listen to the diverse voices of community members, human rights advocates, civil society organisations, educators and health care providers, who consistently support the repeal of all laws that criminalise or restrict women’s access to abortion.
ALGA, a member group of WGNRR based in rural Kyrgyzstan, recently sent out an alert about the tragic toll of the conflict situation in the south is taking on women and in particular, young women. Alga is highly respected in the region for encouraging rural women’s leadership and defending women’s rights as well as interests.
