Last updated: 10.06.2016 //
Thank you Chair,
Norway is fully committed to the Every Woman Every Child movement.
The revised Global Strategy is a unique tool for maintaining attention on women’s, children’s and adolescent’s health, and provides an opportunity to finish what we did not achieve with the MDG agenda.
The strategy is well aligned with the Agenda 2030 in its focus on the wellbeing of every woman, child and adolescent so that they can thrive and use their talents to transform the societies they live in.
Successful implementation calls for a multi-sectorial approach to health, and requires investments and involvement from other sectors such as education, nutrition, water and sanitation, not least to ensure early childhood development.
We applaud the clear emphasis on human rights and the focus on inequities that still exist in access to basic health services.
The strategy sets out to respond to women and children everywhere, also in humanitarian settings and conflict situations. Women, children and adolescents in these settings are at higher risk of death and are more vulnerable to sexual violence.
We welcome the inclusion of adolescents in the strategy. In particular, access to sexual and reproductive health services is essential to girls’ health and future education and job opportunities. Young people must be directly involved in defining needs and solutions.
An important contribution to end unsafe abortion is to expand safe abortion services to the extent that national laws allow for it. We encourage adjustment of policies and laws in line with regional and international agreements that member states have signed, such as the Maputo Protocol. Post-abortion care and access to post-abortion family planning are parts of this. WHO’s Guidelines on Safe Abortion are important normative tools to end unsafe abortions.
Country ownership and increased domestic financing in line with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda will make health financing more sustainable.
The Global Financing Facility in support of Every Woman Every Child is set up to close the financing gap in high burden countries to reach these goals, primarily through more domestic financing and pooling of resources.
The GFF Trust Fund will provide countries with catalytic financing of their national plans to implement the Strategy.Canada, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Norway are the first contributors to the GFF Trust Fund, which is now engaged in twelve high burden countries. We invite more donors to be part of this mechanism.
Finally, Norway is happy to co-sponsor the resolution.
Thank you!