The Hunger Project’s Executive VP, John Coonrod, has moved from New York City to Washington, DC to strengthen THP’s seat at the table of international development. Each week, John sends us insight into issues of health, policy, human rights and more by way of the Washington Weekly.
The Future of Rights for Women and Girls
Reaching 120 million Women and Girls by 2020
Last week, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, and the Gates Foundation hosted a Family Planning Summit designed to revitalize support for universal access to reproductive health services for women. Both the British Government and the Gates Foundation promised to double their funding to family planning between now and 2020. Overall, the conference raised $4.6 billion in commitments, including $50 million from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The funds should be sufficient to reach the 120 million women who currently lack access to reproductive health services by 2020.
Read more about the United Kingdom’s efforts to step up in development conversations.
Agencies “Extremely Concerned” with Push Back on Women’s Rights
At a monthly gender roundtable organized by Women Thrive Worldwide, speakers from Plan, Save the Children, UNDP and the World Bank emphasized the significant progress women’s rights have made in recent years – such as education – and where progress is stalled – such as economic opportunity. In response to a question, the representative of the World Bank commented that agencies were “extremely concerned” about the push back against women’s rights by some countries at this year’s Commission on the Status of Women and Rio+20 and that there is real hesitation about holding a Fifth World Conference for Women for fear that the world might lose ground.
New Publications
USAID has published its annual report on all the voluntary organizations that registered with it in 2011 – including the Global Hunger Project (page 58)
Upcoming events
July 20: Child Survival Meeting with USAID
July 22-27: XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington
July 24: Launching of the “Roadmap to End Hunger 2.0” in the US Congress
August 10: Hunger Summit hosted by David Cameron in London
