Donors session panel speech, September 9, 2004
Dr. Natalia Kanem
The Ford Foundation
It is a great honor for me to represent the Ford Foundation today to attend this forum that celebrates the tenth anniversary of ICPD, and the establishment of the Partners in Population and Development. This is an occasion for us to review what we have achieved in the past ten years, and how we are going to do better in the next ten years. I want to thank the organizer for giving me this opportunity to say a few words from an international donor's point of view.
The field of Sexuality and Reproductive Heath emerged from a need, voiced most strongly by women's health and rights advocates, to move beyond the narrowly-defined field of population control. The comprehensive approach to sexual and reproductive health and rights is centered on individuals' sexual and reproductive needs and rights. The United Nation's meetings in Cairo in 1994 and Beijing in 1995 created a worldwide change in thinking about reproductive health, in terms of women's rights and their position in society, People in all countries around the world are striving to understand these ideas and to translate them into reality in different social contexts. The Ford Foundation is very proud that it has been able to help experts in China and 12 other countries, where the Foundation has offices, to work on this new thinking and to support them as they seek to link these new ideas to social change and social progress.
As a private philanthropic organization, the Foundation is more flexible with its grant-making and is able to facilitate the ideas proposed by innovative people and groups worldwide. The Ford Foundation's Sexuality and Reproductive Health program therefore is a resource for a wide array of creative individuals and institutions. It focuses on support for groups working on the challenges facing people in the aspects of their lives related to sexuality and reproduction. In particular, it addresses issues in these areas that have an impact on the achievement of health, the exercise of rights, and the attainment of individual, family, and community well-being. The Foundation also views sexual and reproductive health and rights within a broader development agenda that aims to reduce poverty and injustice and to build gender equality. The principal vision for the Ford Foundation's efforts in the SRH field are:
l to empower communities and individuals to understand and achieve their fundamental right to sexual and reproductive health;
l to help people build the human and social resources required to sustain their reproductive health and rights; and
l to strengthen knowledge of sexuality and reproductive health issues in order to help develop good public policy and public understanding; and
l to help create equitable gender relations at all levels of society.
In order to achieve these aims, the Foundation stresses:
l A flexible approach to working with creative institutions and individuals;
l A focus on supporting the aims and goals of the people we work with rather
than imposing an outside agenda
l An emphasis on innovative approaches and new knowledge and concepts;
and
l Working from studies, experiments and pilot sites towards the scaling up of
successful innovations.
The Ford Foundation has been supporting sexuality and reproductive health work in China for almost 15 years. Our focus is to address the fast changing and highly diverse social, cultural, political and economic conditions in China, and to help China's specialists solve the challenges that China faces. We aim to work creatively with government, business and all kinds of social organizations to be in the forefront of efforts to address the key challenges facing society. Our principal partners in China include women's health and rights advocates; government agencies; HIV/AIDS public health and rights groups; youth organizations; community-based groups; national and regional coalitions; NGOs; educational and research institutions; and individuals. It is their work that is bringing about change, and it is their work that is also recognized today.
For example, for the past decade, we have closely worked with the National Population and Family Planning Commission and Association to help them with the transition of the Chinese government's family planning policy towards a people-centered reproductive health and rights program, using principles of informed choice, confidentiality, and counseling. The Foundation-supported 'quality of care' pilot projects have been successfully scaled up and disseminated to the NFPA's projects all over China.
Another example is our support for the work in Chaohu, Anhui Province, to address the problems of caring for the health, well-being and social status of girl babies as a way of helping solve the growing challenge of sex ratio imbalance.
We also provide support for people working to solve the challenge of HIV/AIDS, with a particular focus on combating AIDS stigma through education, advocacy and community-based initiatives organized by people living HIV/AIDS.
The Foundation believes that helping women and men achieve better reproductive health status is important in improving the social position of women and is a basis for all aspects of China's social and economic development.
We all recognize that the task of implementing new ideas and new methodologies is not easy; the challenge ahead is to translate the new thinking into the daily work of local officials and practitioners. Going forward we think that, in the current world context, a number of key issues need to be addressed:
l Governments, particularly in the north but also including those in the south, need to think more deeply about increasing the resources they commit to solving the challenges of reproductive health and rights.
l We need to develop better systems of governance and management for reproductive health so that they focus on the needs of individuals and the delivery of better services; and
l We need to generate a better understanding of the roles and rights of both men and women, so that gender equality and better reproductive health can be realized.
The Ford Foundation stands ready to do its part in continuing to help China and the world experts in their efforts to bring these new visions into reality. Thank you!
