From

September 30th to October 3rd, 2013, the High Level Panel on Womens Health: Rights, Empowerment and Social Determinants, called by UNFPA, was held in Mexico City. Invited by UNFPA-ICPD, the coordinating agency of the meeting, a diverse representation of civil society organizations participated. As with the earlier consultations in Bali and the Netherlands, the work methodology initially involved deepening the discussion around strategic topics in order to generate programs and public policies on womens reproductive and sexual rights, as well as on other closely-linked health issues (including non communicable diseases), and focused on the three main challenges that the ICPD has identified: 1. Equality of access, 2. Quality of services, and 3. Accountability. During the first day, several lectures took place with the goal of promoting relevant discussions for the work in the following days. The lectures developed were: Why are we here? Why this topic? Review of the issues on womens health, headlined by C. Abouzahr; What young people want, with Oriana Lpez, and Equality, quality, accountability: Our main challenges, with Gita Sen, which was the main intervention of the event. Finally, participants had space to review a number of cases of strategies, experiences, and lessons learned from the ICPD perspective, in countries such as Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Mexico. During the second day, the work methodology involved working groups, each of which debated concurrently the following topics: 1. Contraception, 2. Maternal health, 3. Safe abortions, and 4. HIV and sexually transmitted infections. Each group had two facilitators and a scribe, who prepared documents to serve as basis for the discussions of the following day. During the last day of the meeting, each working group delivered to the plenary a report on the discussion of the assigned topic, which served to produce the final consensus-based document. The UNFPA-ICPD team will work on this document, and the final version of the document will be circulated among the meeting participants. Overall, we can state that the conclusions document of the meeting of experts reaffirms the contents of the ICPD Plan of Action and encourages the governments of the region to commit to the implementation of policies and programs that enforce the agreements made in Cairo.

UNFPA-ICPD Beyond 2014 Expert Meeting on Womens Health: Rights, Empowerment and Social Determinants Comes to an End CAIRO CONSENSUS AGREEMENTS ARE REAFFIRMED