News

Humanitarian aid needs to transform in order to protect and advance sexual and reproductive health and rights in emergency situations like war and natural disasters. That is the message of the UNFPA State of World Population report 2015, which was launched by UNFPA and Rutgers on 3 December 2015 in The Hague.

Refugees need safety, food and shelter, but to what extent are their sexual and reproductive health and rights met? These and other questions are still largely unanswered, even though the number of people in humanitarian settings has almost doubled in the past decade. Every day, 507 women and adolescent girls die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth in emergency situations and in fragile states.

In 2013, Rutgers conducted a study to investigate the sexual health of lesbian women, gay men, bisexual men and women and trans people in the Netherlands. Nearly 5,000 people participated in this first nation-wide study amongst these groups.

On World Aids Day, 1 December 2015, experts and policy makers from all over the world will gather in Durban, South Africa to explore a bigger role for female condoms in the prevention of HIV/AIDS and unintended pregnancies.

The Royal Netherlands Embassy in Burundi has today approved EUR 17.4 million in funding for a joint national programme “Improving the sexual and reproductive health of adolescents and youth in Burundi” (2016-2020). Over a period of five years the programme will be gradually scaled-up nation-wide.

On Thursday 19 November an agreement has been signed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Right Here Right Now Partnership, an alliance of four Dutch NGOs and three networks from the South, all working in the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights. The partnership aims at better information and education and access to comprehensive youth friendly services through sustainable policy changes. A little over € 34,6 million has been made available for this 5-year programme, that will be executed in eleven countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Today the Heads of State and other Ministers of the EU and African countries will present a final declaration on the European refugee crisis. This declaration is the result of the Valletta Summit on Migration (11/12 November) in Malta with the political ambition to offer a concrete solution to the refugee crisis. The final declaration contains the Plan of Action as well as financial resources from the EU Emergency Trust fund. In Rutgers view sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) cannot be absent in the elaboration of the Plan of Action. SRHR must be part of the EU Emergency Trust fund.

3- 6 November, the 3rd International Conference on Women’s Shelters took place in The Hague. More than a thousand delegates from across the globe gathered to share experiences, increase awareness, and exchange effective approaches for improving safety and support to survivors, and ultimately, ending violence against women and children. 4 members of the MenEngage Europe Alliance who attended the conference were inspired, but an important question remained: Why did so few men attend the conference while most of the violence is perpetrated by men enacting false notions of manhood, power and control? This blog is an open invitiation for further dialogue.

In October an expert meeting took place in Pretoria (South Africa) on SRHR education and HIV prevention programmes for adolescents and young people. For three days 100 people, from 18 different countries, working with and for young people and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and HIV prevention had the opportunity to link policy and practice. Read a reflection of the results in the online magazine called ‘More Access and Better Quality’.

Rutgers appointed Mr Ton Coenen as its new executive director. The Supervisory Board views him as a decisive leader, who will take charge of the organisation with a great deal of commitment. Ton Coenen, who is to replace Dianda Veldman, will assume his post on 1 January 2016.