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August 27, 2004
Countdown 2015

More than 700 activists, health-program specialists, academics and parliamentarians from 109 countries will gather in London beginning Tuesday to assess progress in achieving goals for women’s health and empowerment set at the landmark United Nations population conference in 1994 in Cairo, Egypt. Organized by a coalition of nongovernmental organizations, the Countdown 2015 Global Roundtable will review achievements in improving sexual and reproductive health and rights worldwide since the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), with the aim of setting clear priorities, recruiting new allies and resources, and focusing on the critical needs of young people.

As the only international organization dedicated entirely to preventing deaths and injuries of women from unsafe abortion, Ipas will play a major role at the roundtable in highlighting successes and challenges in implementing ICPD recommendations related to abortion.

“Unsafe abortion is without doubt one of the most neglected of all the reproductive health issues that were addressed at the ICPD,” said Ipas President Elizabeth Maguire. “Every year, nearly 70,000 women die and millions more suffer long-term, often life-altering, injuries from complications of unsafe abortion. Clearly, the international community is not doing enough.”

Along with the U.S.-based Center for Reproductive Rights and the Women’s Health Foundation of Indonesia, Ipas has organized a daily working group to focus attention on what needs to be done to ensure that positive change related to abortion becomes a reality by 2015. (2015 is the year the United Nations has set to reach targets related to both the ICPD and its Millennium Development Goals.) The working group will address the themes of advocacy strategies for achieving legal and policy recognition of abortion rights; creating an enabling environment for public discussion and action; and building the capacities of health systems to meet women’s needs for comprehensive abortion care.

“The working group offers a rare opportunity to bring together different perspectives on this issue and to look at common ground,” said Ipas Senior Policy Advisor Leila Hessini. “In addition to seeing how far we’ve come since Cairo, we’ll examine what was left out of the Cairo agenda and how all relevant sectors of society can do their part to ensure that women can benefit from their most basic rights to life and health.

On Wednesday, September 1, Ipas will host a press conference to launch the last in a series of global reports assessing progress on unsafe abortion since the ICPD. Speakers will be:

Ipas representatives will also participate in many other aspects of the roundtable. For example, in an address to a mini-plenary on human rights, Dr. Nadine Gasman, Director of Ipas Mexico, will discuss progress in building legal abortion services for survivors of sexual violence in Mexico. Dr. Bela Ganatra, Senior Research and Policy Advisor with Ipas India , will address a working group on Safe Motherhood about the importance of reducing maternal mortality from unsafe abortion.

Ipas is an international nongovernmental organization that has worked for three decades to save women’s lives from unsafe abortion and to help all women safely exercise their sexual and reproductive rights. Through clinical training, promotion of reproductive-health technology, and advocating for policy change, Ipas aims to ensure that women can obtain safe, respectful and comprehensive abortion care, including counseling and family planning to prevent future unintended pregnancies. Ipas’s headquarters are in North Carolina, USA, and the organization has offices and staff in 11 countries on five continents.

For more information, contact:
Kirsten Sherk
Senior Associate, Media Relations
e-mail: sherkk@ipas.org
phone: 919.960.5612
fax: 919.929.0258