Intervention during General Assembly Informal Negotiations on Post-2015 Declaration, Thursday 19 February

Interactive Dialogue with Major Groups and other stakeholders

Marianne Haslegrave, Director, Commonwealth Medical Trust (Commat), through RutgersWPF

Thank you, Mr Co-facilitator. Honorable delegates:

I am speaking on behalf of the Health in Post-2015 Coalition. The Commonwealth Medical Trust (Commat) also contributes to the work of the Platform to promote SRHR Beyond 2015.  

At the outset we wish to thank Suriname for their powerful statement yesterday. 

Our intervention will focus on gender and health in the Post-2015 Declaration.

We call upon Member States to agree a Declaration that ensures the achievement of all human rights, including: the rights of girls and women of all ages and in all their diversities; the right to achieve the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; and sexual and reproductive rights.

We affirm the ambition of poverty eradication as the main objective of the post-2015 development agenda. There is, however, another side to the coin: wellbeing. This is a concept that, for example, links health to gender equality, and helps to address improving quality of life.

A medical prescription alone will not help:

•  the adolescent girl who has to stay home each month as there are no girls’ toilets in her school;
•  the woman whose employment and social participation is restricted by unwanted or ill-timed pregnancies;
•  the sex worker, living with HIV, unable to access treatment, care or support, because of criminalization and stigma;
•  the woman disabled as a result of domestic or intimate partner violence;
•  the migrant woman labourer, ill from the toxic chemicals that she applies all day without protective measures;
•  the woman with a chronic lung disease caused by indoor air pollution, with no access to treatment or care, or sustainable energy alternatives. 

These women may have been lifted out of extreme poverty, but they are denied a life of dignity and wellbeing. We therefore ask that ‘well-being’ be included in the Declaration, supported by the recognition of the social determinants of health.  

We envisage that by 2030, we will not only have eliminated poverty in terms of income indicators, but we will have created the combination of social, health and justice systems which will uphold the human rights of women and girls of all ages and all diversities.

I thank you for your attention, and request you to refer to the Statements by the Women’s Major Group and the Health in Post-2015 Coalition for further elaboration.

And, Mr Co-facilitators,

On a personal note, my grand-daughters aged 10 and 7 are watching this from their home in South Africa. I keep coming back to these meetings to work for the Future they Deserve.