From Millennium Development Goals to post-2015 sustainable development: sexual and reproductive health and rights in an evolving aid environment

Abstract

Using research from country case studies, this paper offers insights into the range of institutional and structural changes in development assistance between 2005 and 2011, and their impact on the inclusion of a sexual and reproductive health and rights agenda in national planning environments. At a global level during this period, donors supported more integrative modalities of aid -sector wide approaches, poverty reduction strategy papers, direct budgetary support -with greater use of economic frameworks in decision-making. The Millennium Development Goals brought heightened attention to maternal mortality, but at the expense of a broader sexual and reproductive health and rights agenda. Advocacy at the national planning level was not well linked to programme implementation; health officials were disadvantaged in economic arguments, and lacked financial and budgetary controls to ensure a connection between advocacy and action. With increasing competency in higher level planning processes, health officials are now refocusing the post-2015 development goals. If sexual and reproductive health and rights is to claim engagement across all its multiple elements, advocates need to link them to the key themes of sustainable development: inequalities in gender, education, growth and population, but also to urbanisation, migration, women in employment and climate change.

Association between intimate partner violence and utilization of facility delivery services in Nigeria: a propensity score matching analysis

“…IPV prevented the attainment of Millennial Development Goals including those pertaining to lowering maternal/child morbidity and mortality [5]. The Millennial Development Goals (MDG) 5 was targeted to improve maternal health, reduce maternal deaths, and create universal access to maternal or reproductive health services by 2015 [12]. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) also place strong emphasis on promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment that can reduce the women’s vulnerability to IPV.…”

Intimate partner violence and utilization of maternal health care services in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

“…The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) five was targeted to improve maternal health by reducing maternal mortality and universal access to reproductive health by 2015 [1]. Although substantial progress has been made globally, outcomes in a number of developing countries is limited [2].…”

Sexual and reproductive health and rights in the evolving post-2015 agenda: perspectives from key players from multilateral and related agencies in 2013

“…The tapestry of Member States negotiating development goals (and the merger of two parallel post-2015 processeson poverty and the environment) could make this decision-making process far more complex than the last, compounded by the diversity of influential actors on the world stage (from big banks and multinational corporations, to powerful philanthropic organisations and advocacy coalitions, to religious orders) that seek to wield their considerable economic and political influence. 5 Consequently, in a world still reeling from the shockwaves of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the potential for the post-2015 outcome document not to be grounded in a fundamental health and human rights framework is very real, as is the "watering down" of any transformative, visionary, post-2015 goals. For sexual and reproductive health and rights advocates, these multiple challenges are heightened by the predicted intense opposition to sexual and reproductive health and rights, and the "much older and more intractable prejudice and fear directed at women's and girls' empowerment in all its forms".…”

“…Despite this positive framing within both post-2015 processes, sexual and reproductive health and rights commentators insist that advocates remain vigilant right through to the end of the Member-State negotiated post-2015 document. 1,4,5 While it was thought that the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Beyond 2014 was occurring at a fortuitous time, and would fuel momentum for integrating sexual and reproductive health and rights into the post-2015 paradigm, 6 it has in fact triggered serious conservative opposition. This raises questions as to how ICPD Beyond 2014 outcomes will be fed into the post-2015 process.…”