EN News

Global Updates

IPPF warns that millions of vulnerable women and girls will pay the price for catastrophic budget cuts

We are deeply saddened that one of the strongest European champions of SRHR has been fundamentally undermined by a government lacking any moral compass. Please read the IPPF statement for the UK aid budget cuts here

Strategy Design Process

The process to design IPPF’s next strategy is now fully under way. In May, the first phase will come to an end, and we will move into the Listening and Visioning Phase. You can read more about the process in the Roadmap. You can also watch the Webinar with Alvaro Bermejo and more than 70 MA colleagues.
There are many exciting activities planned for the next 7 months. The Listening and Visioning Phase will start with a series of roundtable discussions, designed to infuse new thinking and ideas into the process. Already several MAs have announced their intention to host a roundtable discussion on a topic of their choice. 

You can also host a roundtable discussion. All you need to do, is download this form, fill it in and return it to Strategy2028@ippf.org.

IPPF EN welcomes global commitments to SRHR and gender equality in the Generation Equality Forum 

IPPF EN is involved to ensure strong commitments from the European Union and European Member States to the Generation Equality Forum, and especially to the Action coalitions on Bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights and on Gender-Based Violence. Following the commitments made at the Nairobi Summit on ICPD+25, the GEF Action Coalitions come at a time when concrete actions are needed to secure progress on SRHR and prevent a downfall due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

To this end, IPPF EN, together with Countdown 2030 Europe, puts forward a number of specific recommendations on the main challenges facing gender equality and SRHR. More than that, if GEF is to achieve its objective to build a new momentum to advance gender equality worldwide, Action Coalitions must avoid silos and must instead explore the synergies between them, complementing one another and focusing on interventions addressing power inequities. IPPF EN and Countdown 2030 Europe developed a series of factsheets and videos aiming to build bridges between Action Coalitions to bring about real change in the lives of women and girls worldwide and to show how access to SRHR is essential to achieve gender equality. IPPF EN and Countdown 2030 Europe will also suggest specific SRHR commitments to the EU and Member States for them to adopt in the framework of the GEF.
Read our factsheets here
Watch our videos on SRHR and economic empowerment, digitalisation & the climate crisis. And don’t forget we also have a factsheet on the linkages between SRHR and the European Green Deal here.

Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights prioritised in EU regional programmes
IPPF EN pursues its advocacy efforts to influence the EU programming process, supporting MAs and regional offices to ensure EU funding allocations for SRHR for the seven years to come. IPPF EN participated in several meetings in Brussels, including one official consultation organised by the European Commission to design the future regional programme for Sub-Saharan Africa. IPPF EN asked for SRHR to be included and funded through this programme, as well as for the whole programme to adopt a rights-based, gender-transformative approach. These calls were well received by the European Commission and SRHR are part of the priorities identified for this regional programme. IPPF EN also organised bilateral meetings on the regional programming for Pacific, where entry points are included for SRHR in the regional programme, and on programmes in several countries such as Iran. Our office also continued to support MAs reaching out to their EU Delegations and will pursue these efforts until the programming process is finalised, during the summer.
➜ Advocacy materials to be found here

Regional Updates

From 8-10 February, IPPF EN together with its partners from Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Kosovo and North Macedonia, held its Project Inception meeting kicking off the Youth Voices – Youth Choices project. This project funded by the MSD for Mothers programme will advocate with young people for more accessible and youth friendly SRH services and information in and beyond emergency situations (based upon the COVID-19 experience).

As most countries still faced travel restrictions following the COVID-19 pandemic, we met virtually. Despite the challenges of such a meeting, it allowed us to invite all interested staff and young volunteers to join and with over 35 people attending (parts of) the meeting, it allowed many more people to attend than originally planned.

The inception meeting facilitated further clarification of the goals and objectives and narrowed down the focus of the expected results. Additional thematic virtual sessions allowed to bring in relevant staff and volunteers to discuss the financial context, the role of young people throughout the whole project, the MEL framework and future steps. 

This meeting was a first step of the project that will run until June 2023. During this first year, we will conduct research to better understand the needs of young people and relevant stakeholders in accessing SRH care, services and information in periods of crisis such as COVID.

Supporting the upcoming European Parliament Report on SRHR

IPPF EN has been mobilizing to gather support for the upcoming European Parliament Report on the situation of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in the EU. This is the first EP Report specifically dedicated to SRHR in almost 10 years. It reaffirms SRHR as human rights, intrinsically linked with gender equality; highlights the remaining challenges in accessing the whole range of SRHR in the EU, challenges compounded by COVID-19 measures; denounces the backsliding on women’s rights, gender equality and SRHR across Europe and globally; and makes recommendations to EU Member States and EU institutions on SRHR. It will give a high level of political importance to SRHR at EU level at a crucial time. Together with EPF, IPPF EN has produced a Briefing in support of the report and has shared it with EU Member Associations on the 15 April, for them to share it with their MEPs who are allies or in the movable middle. The Report was adopted by the FEMM Committee on 10 May. IPPF EN will count on the support of Member Associations to share a voting alert ahead of the plenary vote (most likely 23-24 June). 

Updates from the Movement Accelerator Program
  Two-part workshop series on A/B message testing: IPPF’s Winning Narratives Centre has been working closely with Alliance4Europe to support our online opposition monitoring through their social media intelligence unit online tracking tool. As part of this work, they offered to run two interactive online training workshop sessions focused specifically on building skills around online and A/B message testing. The workshop offered several practical take-away learning tools and templates, and was attended by Member Associations and partners across Europe and Africa. 

The Movement Accelerator team continues to work closely with Member Associations and partners in the Africa Region, building on the strategic communications work tested in Europe, to pilot new and contextualised values-based communications strategies. In Nigeria, our MA Planned Parenthood Federation Nigeria is finalising two reframed communication strategies, one targeting parent’s support to CSE and access to SRH information, and the other targeting young people directly on access to SRH information and services. In Kenya and Tanzania, we are about to begin message development work, and will work closely with local communications experts, including a regional expert in strategic communications Well Made Strategy to support the design and testing of new values-based messages related to Family Planning in East Africa.

Updates from YSAFE
  Spring 2021 saw the conclusion of the YSAFE Erasmus+ “Safe from SGBV” project. We completed analysis of the findings from the piloting activities that our participants ran with over 300 young people in Portugal, Romania and Serbia, and are very happy with the results. They demonstrate that the new toolkit we created together is an effective resource in the hands of trained educators. Workshops that are run according to its guidance produce positive impacts in young participants’ understanding of sexual and gender-based violence, and we look forward to seeing many MAs make use of it. A fully designed copy will be available later this summer and we will keep you updated with the development of the interactive online tool we will be creating out of it later in the year. If you were unable to attend our closing webinar in April and would like to know more, please don’t hesitate to contact Catherine in the Youth Unit at cbgluckman@ippf.org. We also warmly encourage you to listen directly to the experiences of some of the young people involved in the project in the miniseries created with the YSAFE podcast team.

Securing EU funds for women’s rights, gender equality and the fight against gender-based violence within the EU

After 3 years of intense advocacy efforts, the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme in the EU budget has been adopted (see Regulation and Work Programme). In cooperation with Brussels-based partners and together with IPPF EN MAs, IPPF EN has been advocating towards EU institutions and EU Member States for a strong and ambitious Programme. The overall amount of the Programme was increased compared to the previous MFF (€1.55 billion, which is more than double the previous amount); and within that amount, funds were earmarked for women’s rights/gender equality and against gender-based violence, as requested by IPPF EN and the European Parliament. The objectives of the Programme include: to promote women’s full enjoyment of rights and gender equality, and to prevent and combat all forms of gender-based violence within the EU. IPPF EN will now see how IPPF EN MAs could benefit from these gains.

Fighting the abortion ban alongside women human rights defenders in Poland Since the last Spotlight Newsletter in February, IPPF EN continues to coordinate the work of a group of Polish and European civil society organisations (CSOs) to fight the ban, and mobilise allies in European institutions to address the situation on the ground. Mid-April, at the initiative of our Portuguese Member Association, and through this coordination group, IPPF EN drafted a joint civil society letter to the Portuguese Presidency of the EU, calling on EU Member States to address breaches of the rule of law, violations of women’s rights and the right to peaceful protest, and the targeting of women’s rights defenders and their organisations in Poland. It was signed by over 200 CSOs in 20 European countries, including many of IPPF EN Member Associations in EU Member States; and IPPF EN encouraged the Member Associations to also send the letter to their own governments (especially their EU Affairs Ministers).

At the end of March, together with Human Rights Watch and CIVICUS, IPPF EN had also published an extended media report, detailing the escalating threats to women human rights defenders. IPPF EN is also in the process of launching a social media campaign, Defend the Defenders, which should be promoted by IPPF EN and Member Associations at national level, to show solidarity with women human rights defenders in Poland.

See all of IPPF EN resources on Poland on this NEW dedicated webpage: https://www.ippfen.org/alert-poland.

International Roma Day

On 8 April, ENRO marked International Roma Day on social media by highlighting the work of the MAs in Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia with and for Roma communities as part of the My Body, My Rights project, which focuses on improving access and acceptability of family planning, especially among girls; see the Twitter thread here. IPPF EN shared visuals taken from a forthcoming animated video commissioned by ENRO to highlight this project and all its different actors working together at local level to bring about positive change for Roma girls, women and young people.

Resources

All CSE Resources from the GUSO project Get Up Speak Out for Youth Rights!
Activity guide: CSE for 10-14 olds

Rutgers: New research report on C19 and young people Rutgers has launched their new research report:
‘I feel that things are out of my hands – How COVID-19 prevention measures have affected young people’s sexual and reproductive health in Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal, Uganda and Zimbabwe’
This international study amongst almost 3,000 young people across four African and two Asian countries shows that COVID-19 has had a huge impact on young people’s lives and that all negative impacts are interlinked, and Rutgers found that existing inequalities are laid bare and exacerbated by the pandemic. 

Highlights from the research are also being shared across their social media platforms: Linkedin|  Instagram | Facebook | Tweet EN

SRHR recognized in the new EP report on a new EU-Africa Strategy 

Please read the European Parliament report on a new EU-Africa Strategy – a partnership for sustainable and inclusive development, that was voted in February and include strong references to SRHR.

IPPF stands for Vaccine Equity and for a fairer and healthier world for everyone

Please read here the important IPPF statement in support of WHO’s Vaccine Equity Declaration and Fabian’s Cataldo’s (Senior Advocacy Advisor) blog on fighting health inequalities under C19 on World Health day.

Launch of the Child Marriage Research to Action Network by Girls not brides

Girls Not Brides are pleased to announce the launch of the Child Marriage Research to Action Network (the CRANK), a place for researchers and practitioners to work together on a coordinated, harmonised global research agenda on child marriage, and to translate it into policies and programmes to end child marriage. The CRANK is a joint initiative of Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) – United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Global Programme to End Child Marriage. In addition to organising quarterly learning sessions, the CRANK tracks ongoing and upcoming research through an open research tracker, and shares emerging lessons through biannual research digests.