Summary Day 2
Looking ahead to the future
On the second day of the 20th International Dialogue on Population and Sustainable Development, the experts looked ahead to the future: by pulling together the takeaways from the first day, they identified ‘what’ and ‘who’ counts for resilience in realising sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in situations of crises. Dr Alvaro Bermejo, Director-General, International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), kicked off the discussion with a lively interview, in which participants had the opportunity to raise questions and exchange learnings from the conference in an interactive format. The second day was dedicated to exploring the virtual marketplace and engaging with the marketplace presenters.
Moreover, during a fishbowl discussion, ideas for a toolbox were collected, based on the learnings from the workshops on day one. Additionally, the participants had the chance to meet individually and the marketplace offered various project presentations and the opportunity to engage with presenters. At the end of the International Dialogue, Amour Dieu-Donné Vodounhessi, IPPF Youth Champion, inspired with his closing words for further engagement beyond the conference.
Broadening partnerships to build resilience
Dr Alvaro Bermejo (IPPF) added to the conclusions from Svenja Schulze and Dr Natalia Kanem’s welcoming speeches and the working groups on day one by sharing his key factors to build resilience. For one, it is important to support grassroots feminist, LGBTQ and women’s movements and find the most appropriate way of funding them. He stressed that broadening partnerships within SRHR and beyond to include progressive faith-based and other organizations is essential to building resilience. Considering the threats SRHR is facing in the world now, he saw an urgent need for action: ‘If we are going to build resilience, we need to understand [that] the operational responses are not enough. We now need a rapid political feminist action that is the only one that can build that resilience.’
A toolbox to build resilience
During an interactive fishbowl discussion, participants had the chance to share their main takeaways from the conference and discuss what should be included in the toolbox to build resilience. The participants jointly identified some main tools that help to build resilience when it comes to SRHR being better prepared for future crises. They agreed on the need to be creative, but also to consider the needs of the people when bringing together ideas for the toolbox.
Importance of robust data: It is crucial to look beyond big numbers and understand what happens on the ground. This includes analysing and presenting numbers in digestible ways for different audiences. Additionally, continuing to monitor resilience is key to making good decisions and advocating well.
Power of partnerships for SRHR: Conducting analyses with intersectional and gender perspectives is key to identify where partnerships are needed and what issues are important. In this context, self-organized networks of women supporting other women, for instance to self-manage abortion, are a particular game changer. Building partnerships with feminist groups is also crucial. Overall, innovative strategies and methods are required in order to work better together and learn from each other in the humanitarian and development spaces.
Ensure that we maintain the gains we made during the pandemic: New innovative approaches that were developed during crises should prevail. This involves sharing new information and technology to advance access to services. Furthermore, the power of civil society must be recognized and engaged to promote resilience, dialogue and flexibility in funding.
Technical innovations are key: It is important to ensure that telemedicine models, chat bots and other technical approaches implemented during the pandemic remain and are further expanded. For this, governments and other actors need to follow the lead of civil society in terms of innovation and scale up innovative approaches, like telemedicine.
Involving young people is key
In his summary of the 21th International Dialogue’s take-home messages IPPF Youth Champion, Amour Dieu-Donné Vodounhessi, highlighted the resilience of SRHR movements and actors. Despite the setbacks and threats to sexual and reproductive health and rights seen globally, progressive voices and movements persevere, offering reasons for hope for a brighter and freer future. Speaking from his own experience as part of a youth-led movement, he shared that young people face the reality of these setbacks and threats daily but that they do not give up hope for a better future. For this reason, youth must be involved in SRHR efforts in a meaningful way. In his words, ‘Young people can be the solution. And we are the present. We are the future.’
The fruitful International Dialogue on Population and Sustainable Development will continue in 2023.