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September 15, 2001

As follow-up to the 1990 World Summit for Children, the UN Special Session on Children will bring together government leaders, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), children's advocates and young people themselves to improve the way the world views and treats its children. The Special Session will review progress made since the 1990 Summit and renew commitment to the issue by asking leaders both to identify strategic solutions to problems facing children and to commit the resources necessary to achieve these goals. The Convention on the Rights of the Child will provide the underlying framework for negotiations during the Special Session.

Ipas's role

The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 78,000 women die from unsafe abortions each year and that many more survive, but suffer serious physical injury (WHO, 1998). Many of these women are adolescents who, because they often lack access to sexual and reproductive health services, face a greater risk of unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions than adult women. Furthermore, the tragedy of unsafe abortion does not end with the death and illness of women. A woman who dies needlessly as a result of an unsafe abortion often leaves behind children who struggle to survive in her absence. Motherless children are "3 to 10 times more likely to die within two years than children who live with both parents" (UNICEF, 2000).

Ipas is working within the International Sexual and Reproductive Rights Coalition (ISRRC), an ad hoc group of NGOs, to ensure that adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights issues are included in the Special Session's Outcome Document. The ISRRC has drafted a formal statement to circulate at the Third Substantive Session of the Preparatory Committee for the upcoming Special Session on Children, which advocates strongly for the sexual and reproductive rights of young people throughout the world. In addition, Ipas has worked with the ISRRC to create seven factsheets on issues that affect children's and adolescents' reproductive health.

ISRRC members include:

References


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