ICPD25 Commitment: SRHR in humanitarian settings

At the Nairobi Summit, we share our commitment to intensifying efforts for the full, effective and accelerated implementation and funding of the ICPD Programme of Action, Key Actions for the Further Implementation of the Programme of Action of the ICPD and Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. 

FIGO will uphold the right to sexual and reproductive health care in humanitarian and fragile contexts, by: 

Ensuring the basic humanitarian needs of affected populations, including SRHR, are addressed as critical components of responses to humanitarian and environmental crises, as well as fragile and post-crisis reconstruction contexts, through the provision of access to the full range of sexual and reproductive health services, including access to safe abortion where it is legal, to significantly reduce maternal mortality and morbidity under these conditions.

FIGO’s vision is a world where all women achieve the highest possible standards of physical, mental, reproductive and sexual health. This must hold true wherever women live - and in a world of increasing migration, including in the healthcare community itself - wherever they are forced to go.

In FIGO’s experience, health often takes a lower priority after food and protection in these situations. Medications run out, emergency visits are not available, and attending to pregnancy and childcare simply does not happen. This is a time when most health indicators suffer, diseases worsen, and needs escalate.

FIGO is therefore committed to tackling these needs through addressing:

• Maternal health, antenatal care and hospital-based deliveries must be overseen by a skilled-birth attendant for all pregnant refugees and migrants.
• The detrimental consequences of child-brides and adolescent pregnancy often faced by young girls of refugee families. Protecting female children from sexual exploitation
• Fertility rates which can rise under conflicts and continue to grow due to gaps and unmet need for modern contraceptives, and cultural restriction on the use of family planning and access to safe abortion
• Reproductive morbidity and cancer screening, as well as midlife needs, which must be provided in primary health care for refugees at a wider scale
• Violence and mental health which are not receiving the attention needed with reports showing that women refugees felt concerned about harassment, abuse, rape, and do not feel safe in their spaces.

The needs of these women are huge. Migrants and refugees are people like us who, under drastic natural or human-made disasters, have suffered grave losses: beloved ones, life-time possessions, and family networks. Livelihoods are interrupted - and more so their health care.