Summit 18: The Lancet highlights the SDGs and introduces its Commission on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

 “The historical progression of our societies over the past 50 years has brought us to a point where we now have an opportunity of doing business differently and these SDGs signal to the world the need to seize that opportunity. Can we make this next leap forwards? I believe we can, and I believe the SDGs will show us how to make that leap.” 

These are the words of Ambassador Macharia Kamau, Co-facilitator for the Intergovernmental Negotiations, writing in The Lancet Special Report UN set to change the world with new development goals. He also contrasts the process for the development of the SDGs , which he describes as  “one of the most politically and technically challenging endeavours..” with that for the MDGs — “just a bunch of technocrats sitting round a table to produce a set of goals based on what UN agencies had been doing over the years. There was no attempt to be transformative.”

And on sexual and reproductive health and rights…

The article includes a reference to reproductive health as one of the MDG targets included in the new health goal. Sexual and reproductive health and rights, however, are fully addressed in a comment by Ann Starrs, President and CEO of the Guttmacher Institute. In the comment entitled A Lancet Commission on sexual and reproductive health and rights: going beyond the Sustainable Development Goals, Starrs says that the SDGs “fall short: they take a narrow view of sexual and reproductive health and rights, one of the most crucial, but also most controversial, parts of the SDG agenda.” She makes specific reference to the indicators, currently being developed by the IAEG, saying that it is unlikely that they “will include more than a few indicators for sexual and reproductive health and rights.” The Guttmacher Institute and The Lancet are therefore establishing this Commission on sexual and reproductive health and rights in the post-2015 world to address key sexual and reproductive health and rights priorities and to make the case for adopting policies and programmes for moving forward on them.

Also included in this week’s edition of The Lancet is a Lancet Commission Report on Women and Health: the key for sustainable development as well as an Editorial Women are the key to sustainable development.