Catalyzing Global Change for Women and Girls

Creating progress that can drive true gender equality for women and girls worldwide will be center stage at this week’s global international conference on the health and wellbeing of women and girls: Women Deliver officially kicks off tonight at 7pm in Vancouver, British Columbia, in Canada. 

The Center for Reproductive Rights will be present in force, sharing recent advancements in our groundbreaking global work in reproductive health and rights, alongside more than 6,000 world leaders, influencers, advocates, academics, and many of our global partners. 

In a mainstage plenary session, Nancy Northup, President and CEO of the Center, will discuss the catalytic power of law, policy, and strategic advocacy to hold governments accountable to their commitments to ensure that women’s reproductive rights are both enshrined into law and realized in practice. She will share examples from the Center’s more than 25 years in the field, and is joined by fellow panelists Hina Jilani, Advocate, Supreme Court of Pakistan; Dr. Alvaro Bermejo, Director-General, International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF); Anoka Primrose Abeyrathne, Social Entrepreneur at Sustain Solutions; Waneek Horn-Miller, indigenous activist and former Olympian; Musola Catherine Kaseketi, Founder & Executive Director, Vilole Images Productions and HerAbilities Award Winner; and Dr. Lina Abirafeh, Executive Director, the Arab Institute for Women at the Lebanese American University.

Other Center leaders will appear on panels, including Director for Global Advocacy Rebecca Brown, speaking on “Closing the Access Gap: Services for Survivors of Sexual and  Gender-Based  Violence in Emergencies”,  and Senior Regional Director for Africa Evelyne Opondo, participating in “Taking to the Streets, Prevailing in the Courts—Demanding the Right to Safe Abortion!” And many other Center colleagues will be present at the conference, looking forward to connecting with our many global partners and exchanging ideas, as well as meeting new partners with whom we can continue to extend our shared missions. 

Several of our partners will be participating in panels on the following topics: SRHR in Humanitarian Settings; Breaking the Silence on Infertility; the Decriminaliztion and Destigmatization of Abortion; Advancing SRHR and Gender Equality Amidst the Global Gag Rule; the Potential of Localization to Provide SRHR Services in Crisis Settings, and the Power of Community Engagement. For a full schedule of the Center’s recommended panels, please go to our schedule here.

The goal of this convening is to serve as a catalytic force for accelerating the pace of forward progress in gender equality and the health, rights, and wellbeing of women and girls in the 21st century. 

For those attending the conference, be sure to stop by our booth on the Expo floor to get an overview of our work and see some of our latest publications and materials on our issues. You can map our booth here.

A Center film will be presented in the Women Deliver Film Festival, and is scheduled to be shown Tuesday, June 4 at 5pm. The piece is called “Caroline’s Story,” and it’s an animated short about Caroline, a woman forced to seek an unsafe abortion in Kenya. 

For further additional details about the Center’s presence at Women Deliver 2019, and a list of (and links to) relevant publications, please see this Center Conference Guide.  

For media inquiries, please contact Veronika Cernadas at [email protected].