The communiqué released on June 26 states:
“We reaffirm our strong support to significantly reduce the number of maternal, newborn and under five child deaths as a matter of immediate humanitarian and development concern. Action is required on all factors that affect the health of women and children. This includes addressing gender inequality, ensuring women’s and children’s rights and improving education for women and girls.”     Other highlights in the communiqué include:

FUNDING:
- G8 members committed to mobilize $5 billion of additional funding over the next five years.
- G8 leaders say they “anticipate” that, over the period 2010-2015 the Muskoka Initiative will mobilize significantly greater than $10 billion.

POLICY:
- G8 leaders will assist developing countries to i) prevent 1.3 million deaths of children under five years of age; ii) prevent 64,000 maternal deaths; and iii) enable access to modern methods of family planning by an additional 12 million couples. These results will be achieved cumulatively between 2010-2015.
- The Initiative includes an accountability framework and reporting.
- G8 leaders want this Initiative to give added momentum to the UN-led process to develop a Joint Action Plan to Improve the Health of Women and Children.
- The G8 will support country-led efforts to achieve this objective by making the third voluntary replenishment conference of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria in October 2010 a success. And, they commit to promote integration of HIV and sexual and reproductive health, rights and services within the broader context of strengthening health systems.

Read full summary from Women Deliver

The third Global Compact Leaders Summit concluded on 25 June. In the closing session of the Summit, participants adopted a “New York Declaration by Business” to renew their commitment to the Global Compact Principles.

Among other things, the declaration empasizes a strengthened support for critical development goals, particularly the MDGs, through core business, social investment and advocacy performed individually and in partnerships with civil society and Governments.

Participants also commit to increase transparency and dialogue, as well as engagement, with civil society and labour organizations in their work to advance the ten principles and support development goals.

Read more

Photo: Allan Gichigi/IRIN

Sarah Boseley -The G20 summit at the end of this week must address the need for safe abortion if it is to bring down death rates in pregnancy, as the Canadian government has pledged - and it must deliver on its former pledge to keep people with HIV/Aids in Africa alive.

Never have the deaths of women in childbirth and the fate of their newborn babies been paid so much attention at so high a level. Hard on the heels of the Women Deliver conference in Washington two weeks ago, luminaries, movers and shakers from the UN, business, governments and civil society have assembled in London for the Pacific Health Summit, which has taken as this year’s theme maternal and newborn health. Conversations are going on among people in a position to make a difference - from the largest pharma companies in the world to major donors like USAID.

And the moment it ends, we are into the G20 summit, where the Canadian government has promised to make maternal and newborn health its legacy issue. It wants the world’s leading nations to sign up to a plan which includes better training for health workers, better nutrition for pregnant women, nursing mothers and their children, immunisation, clean water and sanitation.

Read full article by Sarah Boseley (Guardian UK)

WHO

21 MAY 2010 | GENEVA — The Sixty-third World Health Assembly, which brought together Health Ministers and senior health officials from the  World Health Organization (WHO) Member States, concluded business and closed Friday evening.

“You reached agreement on some items that are a real gift to public health, everywhere. Thanks to some all-night efforts, we now have a code of practice on the international recruitment of health personnel,” said Dr Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General. The delegates adopted resolutions on a variety of global health issues including:

Monitoring of the achievement of the health-related Millennium Development Goals
The resolution expresses concern at the relatively slow progress in attaining the Millennium Development Goals, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and at the fact that maternal, newborn and child health as well as universal access to reproductive health services remain constrained by health inequities. Member States noted that MDGs 4 and 5 were lagging behind and agreed to strengthen national health systems as well as take into account health equity in all national policies. They also reaffirmed the value of primary health care and renewed their commitment to prevent and eliminate maternal, newborn and child mortality and morbidity.

Read full news release (WHO)

Women waiting outside clinic. Photo: IRIN/Aubrey

Next to Ministers and  First Ladies, health experts, UN representatives, advocates and youth representatives, this year’s Women Deliver Conference that was held in Washington, D.C. from 7-9 June 2010 also hosted a Parliamentarians’ Forum for the first time which brought together more than 50 Parliamentarians.

“The biggest enemy of women’s health and rights is political indifference”, Jill Sheffield, President of Women Deliver remarked during the opening plenary session.

Ms. Safiye Çağar, Director IERD, UNFPA highlighted the important role Parliamentarians have in achieving maternal health and universal access to reproductive health until 2015. “You are responsible for listening to your constituents, to represent them adequately and to act as legislators”, Ms Çağar emphasised. Mr. Bert Koenders, former Minister for Development Co-operation of the Netherlands said that the role of Parliamentarians is underestimated. “Politicians need to break the silence that still surrounds MDG 5 and sexual and reproductive health and rights”, Koenders remarked.

The Parliamentarians’ Forum culminated in a Parliamentarians’ Statement. Amongst others, Parliamentarians called for additional US $12 billion a year to be invested in women and girls and  to actively work towards the establishment of a global funding mechanism for family planning, mothers and children with other international donors. The statement urges Ministers to establish realistic and verifiable annual action plans for reaching individual MDG targets with a special emphasis on MDG 5 to be presented at the UN High Level Meeting on the MDGs and commit to take a leading role in communicating the societal, economic, political and cultural benefits of investing in women and girls to key stakeholders. Parliamentarians were united in the necessity to pressure governments to deliver for women and girls, the need to reduce barriers for access to quality family planning services and the centrality this plays for the status of women in society as well as the need to improve co-operation between countries and continents.

Read full article from Women Deliver

ILO Ribbon

GENEVA (ILO News) – Governments, employers and workers meeting at the annual conference of the International Labour Organization (ILO) today adopted a new international labour standard on HIV and AIDS - [pdf 1597 KB] - the first international human rights instrument to focus specifically on the issue in the world of work.

The standard is the first internationally sanctioned legal instrument aimed at strengthening the contribution of the world of work to universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support and contains provisions on potentially life-saving prevention programmes and anti-discrimination measures at national and workplace levels. It also emphasizes the importance of employment and income-generating activities for workers and people living with HIV, particularly in terms of continuing treatment.

Dr. Sophia Kisting, Director of the ILO Programme on HIV and AIDS and the World of Work said that “with this new human rights instrument we can harness the strength of the world of work and optimise workplace interventions to significantly improve access to prevention, treatment, care and support. We cannot do it alone but this standard will, I believe, provide a major contribution to making the dream of an AIDS-free generation a reality.”

Read full press release

Mine worker in Zambia

Geneva, 14 June 2010 –The Committee on HIV/AIDS and the world of work adopted its report today, together with the final text of the Recommendation on HIV/AIDS which will be submitted for adoption to the plenary session of the International Labour Conference (ILC) later this week. High-level engagement and consensus on the urgency to act prevailed during this second and final round of discussion for the formulation of the first international human rights instrument to focus on HIV/AIDS and the world of work.

Throughout the amendment process, committee members worked at formulating a recommendation all-inclusive in scope and as practical as possible. Universality of human rights, feasibility, efficiency, sustainability, and accountability were kept at the forefront of all discussions, spurred by a great sense of urgency to address the HIV pandemic.

The report and the recommendation adopted by the Committee will be presented on 16 June to the plenary session of the 99th international Labour Conference. The record vote will take place on 17 June. The proposed Recommendation on HIV/AIDS and the world of work and the attached resolution will require a 2/3 majority vote to be adopted.

Read full article from ILO

Women Deliver

The Women Deliver 2010 conference ended on Wednesday with new energy and commitments for action for women’s health from members of parliament, young people and the rest of the more than 3,000 participants.

Women Deliver founder and president Jill Sheffield said the three-day gathering was, in Winston Churchill’s words, “not the end, not even the beginning of the end, but perhaps the end of the beginning” in the drive to halt the global toll of women’s deaths and disabilities from pregnancy-related causes.

At least one woman dies every 90 seconds from such causes and another 20 suffer infection or disability, while four million newborns die every year. These grim numbers actually represent improvements over the last 20 years, during which many international gatherings have pledged investments in women that failed to materialize.

A comprehensive report tracking progress in maternal and child health was launched on June 8 at the Women Deliver conference. According to the Countdown to 2015 decade report (2000-2010), a lack of skilled attendants at birth accounts for two million preventable maternal deaths, stillbirths and newborn deaths each year, in spite of remarkable progress in some poor countries. The report argues that achieving MDGs 4 and 5 (on maternal and newborn health) is possible by the deadline year 2015, but only a dramatic acceleration of political commitment and financial investment can make it happen.

Read full article by Joanne Omang at womendeliver.org

MARK GEVISSER: COMMENT - Jun 04 2010
Complex anxieties are at play in the wave of homophobia that’s currently sweeping over the continent, writes Mark Gevisser

‘These boys committed a crime against our culture, our religion and our laws,” said the Malawian president Bingu wa Mutharika at the weekend as he pardoned Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga from their sentence of 14 years hard labour. He claimed he was exercising the pardon “on humanitarian grounds”. If he were more truthful, he would have said it was on diplomatic, or expedient grounds; his country is almost entirely dependent on foreign aid, and the pressure on him was intense.

Meanwhile, Monjeza and Chimbalanga will no longer see each other now that they are free, according to reports. How could any young couple bear the pressure and run the risk of recidivism and rearrest? Both have been “returned” to their home communities and their families, it seems, will take up the role of punishing them where the state left off. Two lives, at least, have been ruined, and as the terrible episode draws to a close, it is worth reflecting on why there appears to be a wave of state-sanctioned homophobia across the continent at the moment, and what those of us — African or not — committed to human rights might do about it.

Homosexuality is — as has often been noted — illegal in 38 of Africa’s 53 sovereign states. In most instances, however, this is merely a hangover from the colonial British penal code, which criminalised sodomy for the first time in Africa, and is usually ignored.

Read full article (Mail & Guardian)

Photo: Irin News

Since 2003, the international donor community has succeeded in dramatically boosting the number of patients receiving subsidized AIDS treatment in poor countries—mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa—from a few thousand to about 4 million in 2010. The price tag of this success has, of course, been huge. About half of the $8 billion spent each recent year on international AIDS assistance has gone to treatment, with the other half going to prevention.

In a CGD essay, Mead Over argues that international donor community cannot afford to continue its business-as-usual AIDS policy. It must focus more on preventing HIV to decrease the number of people living with AIDS and to keep treatment sustainable. He presents original estimates of the magnitude of the future fiscal burden of AIDS treatment under alternative assumptions about treatment quality and scale up. And he proposes policy options to harmonize the incentives among donors, recipient governments, and AIDS patients to sustain treatment quality while leveraging treatment demand for the prevention of future cases.

Read full article (Center for Global Development)