From USAID’s Vision for Action to End Child Marriage to launching the Equal Futures Partnership to expanding women’s participation in the politics and economies of their countries, Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, and the first term of the Obama administration, was marked by an unwavering dedication to promoting policies that advanced the rights of women and girls.
We are now looking to our new head of State, John Kerry, and the second term of the Obama administration to continue advocating for and implementing existing policies on these issues throughout U.S. foreign policy and foreign assistance.
To demonstrate mass public support for policies and programs that will allow women and girls to be healthy, empowered, educated and safe, IWHC joined a coalition of groups, including Half the Sky, Girls Not Brides and many others, to tell Sec. Kerry and other key decisionmakers that the work for women and girls is far from done.
Starting this week and through June, we’ll focus on eight different issues that impact the lives of women and girls—such as education, health, violence, early and forced marriage, human rights, and economic empowerment—as part of the 50 Days of Action for Women and Girls Campaign. Each week will focus on a different issue, and we’ll be hosting Twitter chats with experts in the field to answer your questions about what more can be done to advance this agenda.
Thanks to many of you who signed up for our Thunderclap, our #usa4women tweet will go out tomorrow at 12 PM EDT. Our next Thunderclap, with the #usa4girls hashtag, will go out on May 20; we’ll be mobilizing attention around the issue of ending early and forced marriage. Watch our Facebook page and Twitter feed to learn how you can help!
by Suzanne Ito on April 10, 2013
in Events
Nearly 300 supporters of the International Women’s Health Coalition gathered on a warm spring evening for its annual gala at The Pierre hotel in New York on Monday, April 8.
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| IWHC honored CNN and ABC News anchor Christiane Amanpour for being the only mainstream journalist to maintain an active beat reporting on the lives of women and girls worldwide. During her remarks, Christiane Amanpour said: “When we all get up here and lobby for women’s rights, it’s not that we’re saying women should rule the world, it’s that we’re saying women should take their rightful place in this world. And that women should have parity and equality and that it is a shame that in 2013 even in the most powerful, most progressive democracy, the one built on the very idea of freedom and equal rights for all, women’s right are still not fully achieved.” (Read Amanpour’s full remarks here.) |
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| Adenike Esiet (left), Executive Director of Action Health Incorporated (AHI) in Lagos, Nigeria, with Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund. During the ceremony, Osotimehin presented Esiet with the first Joan B. Dunlop award, a tribute to IWHC founder Joan Dunlop. The award recognized Esiet’s work to advance the health and rights of adolescents in Nigeria. In her concluding remarks, Esiet said: “I’m in all this glitz today because I’m here dressed in honor of Joan. These earrings I’m wearing, she gave me in 1993 when she visited Nigeria. She was a beautiful woman. She sought to make people beautiful. It’s truly an honor for me to be getting the inaugural Joan Dunlop Award.” (Read Esiet’s full remarks here.) (Read Osotimehin’s introduction of Esiet here.) |
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| From left to right: IWHC gala vice chair Diana Taylor, Jim Zirin, gala board chair Marlene Hess and gala vice chair Marnie Pillsbury. |
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| Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (left) with IWHC President Françoise Girard (center) and Dr. Uwemedimo Esiet, co-founder, with Adenike Esiet, of Action Health Incorporated. |
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| IWHC board members stood in recognition for their service to the organization. From left to right: Susan Nitze, Ann Unterberg, Stuart C. Burden and Marnie S. Pillsbury. |
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| The family and friends of Joan Dunlop posed with the evening’s honoree, Adenike Esiet. From left to right: Arthur Coppotelli, Joanna Larson (Dunlop’s niece), Esiet and Penelope West (Dunlop’s sister). |
Ninuk Widyantoro was one of eleven people who founded the YKP Women’s Health Foundation in Indonesia in 2001. The founders established the organization to pursue legal protections for women’s reproductive rights and health, especially safe abortion, and to empower their communities to stand up for their rights. Prior to her involvement with YKP, Ninuk had been involved in working for women’s health and rights for more nearly 30 years, and since 1980 she has focused especially on adolescent health. Initially she worked at Planned Parenthood Indonesia for 13 years. A trained psychologist, Ninuk worked at Planned Parenthood as a family planning counselor and supported women in making decisions about their sexual and reproductive health, including abortion. Through this work, she became very interested in working with adolescents and ensuring that they were empowered and able to access non-judgmental health care.
After she left Planned Parenthood Indonesia, Ninuk worked independently and focused on training and supporting others to become counselors. She has done this work in Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Ghana, South Africa, and other places as well. Among her trainees are many college students who were trained as volunteer peer educators who would talk to young people both in school and out of school about sexual and reproductive health.
Along the way, it became very clear that it was necessary to have a law in Indonesia that would protect women and make it possible for women to access abortion services. Eleven people–activists, psychologists, and ob-gyns–came together to create the YKP Womens’ Health Foundation. They decided to only focus on two things: fighting to have legal protections for reproductive health and especially access to safe and legal abortion services and empowering the community, especially the young generation, to access health services and information. When they first launched the organization, they realized that they needed to gather evidence to support their advocacy for better national policy and to understand the needs and demand for sexual and reproductive health services and information.
In 2009, a new health law was passed in Indonesia, with a section on reproductive health. The law says that abortion can only be accessed by women who are rape survivors or if there is a health risk for the woman. There are of course many shortcomings of the law, but it is big progress for Indonesia. Read our analysis of the law from just after it was passed. Today, YKP is working to ensure that the law is implemented in a useful way. Ninuk is currently working on implementing pre- and post-counseling support for women who need an abortion, to make sure that abortion care services are as comprehensive and woman-centered as possible under the current law.
