Member States & Other Stakeholders Commitment Statements

Member States & Other Stakeholders Commitment Statements

Member States & Other Stakeholders Commitment Statements

Heroines of Health With introduction by Desta Lakew, Chair, Women in Global Health Africa Today women make up 75% of the global healthcare workforce, yet too often their work is unrecognized. These are three of many untold stories that may hold the key to unlocking better health for more people around the world. Mercy, Dr. Sharmila and Mrs. Rohani come from different backgrounds. They speak different languages. Yet they share a common journey, overcoming steep challenges and expectations to bring better health to their communities. Documentary/US/English/29 minutes/2017 Director: Lisa Russell Producer: GE Healthcare Kyenvu Winner of the Best Short Award at the Pan African Film Festival 2018, Kyenvu tells the story of an unexpected love affair that is formed at a taxi stop in Uganda and is forever changed by a wardrobe choice. Drama/Uganda/English/20 minutes/2018 Director: Kemiyendo Coutinho Producer: Kemiyendo Coutinho The Camel’s Back A young girl suffering from past trauma believes that she has one day left to live. She sets out on a journey to find her one paradise before it happens. This film was winner of the ‘Short Films’ and ‘East African Fiction’ categories at the Mashariki Africa Film Festival in 2017. Drama/Kenya/English/22 minutes/2017 Director: Ari Michelle Mboya Producer: Wangechi Ngugi The screenings will be followed by a Q & A session with the directors.

With introduction by Sophie Harman, Producer. Pili lives in rural Tanzania, working the fields for less than $2 a day to feed her two children and struggling to manage her HIV-positive status in secret. When she is offered the chance to rent a sought-after market-stall, Pili is desperate to have it. But with only two days to get the deposit together, Pili is forced to make increasingly difficult decisions with ever-deepening consequences. How much will she risk to change her life? Pili is the first ever social-realist feature film to focus on women living with HIV in East Africa. It is one of the few films made in Africa that features an ensemble female cast and that uses almost entirely non-actors. The process of making the film was also unique. From the close collaboration with the women throughout the development of the story, to the casting process and the mixture of improvisation and scripted techniques used during the shoot. Pili is a singular collaboration between the filmmakers and the community, to tell the story of the community by the people who live there. Drama/UK/Swahili/83 minutes/2017 Director: Leanne Welham Producer: Sophie Harman

Numerous events and reports on sexual and reproductive health and rights and gender-based violence programming, alongside accountability tracking, raised awareness and stressed theimportance of policy coherence and adequate action to tackle these development challenges in sub-Saharan Africa. However, they often do not result in sustained implementation and resource commitments. The interconnectedness of economic policy and related SDG targets of maternal mortality, GBV and harmful practices such as early marriage and FGM necessitate engagement acrossectors for transparent costing, budgeting, women and youth empowerment, and framework building. This session will bring together a rural women leader, a Minister of higher education, two Francophone young women leaders, a parliamentarian, a judge and several other key African leaders. It will provide a platform for policy dialogue between key multi-sector stakeholders to discuss critical challenges and opportunities to advancing the implementation, financing and monitoring of ICPD Plus 25 normative commitments related to the identified issues. Participants will share broader country-level experiences, provide follow up coordinated actions and highlight the key role of capacity development for young African leaders to empower sustained action and act as a steward for policy coherence, financing needs and universal health coverage, ensuring "no one is left behind.”

Every day, millions of women and couples make decisions on whether to use a contraceptive method to delay, space or avoid pregnancy. Today, more than 300 million women in developing countries are using contraception, but more than 232 million women who want to plan their families are not using an effective method of contraception. This session will discuss high-impact actions that policymakers can take to accelerate action to end unmet need for family planning. It will highlight commitments, innovations and approaches countries are taking to expand access to reproductive health services, especially family planning, as part of achieving universal health coverage. Countries will be invited to discuss lessons learned, and to share ideas on how the global community can, together, drive progress towards expanding access to rights-based family planning in support of attaining universal health coverage.

As religion is an essential part of the sociocultural fabric of many communities, religious leaders use their social capital in support of family planning and healthy youth sexuality. In this session, religious leaders from different faiths, ages and genders in Kenya will share how they help shape norms on family planning and young people’s reproductive health in their communities. The religious leaders will showcase lessons learned on promoting healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies through spaces and mediums of their respective faiths at the local level in Kenya. The session is convened by National Independent Churches of Africa, West Pokot Gospel Music Artists and Muslim Intervention for Health Education, and moderated by Faith to Action Network.

Social protection programmes are a key strategy for addressing the needs of vulnerable groups, including women, older persons, people living with disabilities, youth, and members of minority and marginalized communities. Social protection programmes aim to mitigate chronic or shock-induced poverty, address social risks, and reduce economic vulnerability by enabling poor people to meet their basic consumption needs and improve their livelihoods. This concurrent session will enable social protection programme implementers and actors share experiences and learn from one another on better approaches to deliver social protection programmes. It will also help to how the role of these programmes in achieving a demographic dividend.

Countries are now generating a wealth population data, but these data have yet to be fully utilized in the formulation of population policies and programmes at sub-national levels, something that was envisaged during the 1994 ICPD. The main obstacle to achieving this goal has been the lack of robust data at sub-national levels and inadequate capacity to conduct small area estimations and modelling using population data. These issues have limited efforts to fully integrate population issues in development planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. This session will provide a platform for the exchange of knowledge and best practices, where countries can learn from those who have been able to produce and effectively utilize sub-national data.