Children’s Charities Urge EU to include Sexual and Reproductive Health in COVID-19 Response

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. | April 9, 2020

WASHINGTON, April 10 (C-Fam) As European development ministers met this week to hammer out a $17 billion COVID-19 aid package, primarily for Africa, six of the world’s top children’s charities sent a letter urging that sexual and reproductive health and rights for children be “prioritized” as “life-saving.”

A draft letter obtained by the Friday Fax, including detailed recommendations from the organizations, said, “Girls’ and women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights must continue to be prioritized, funded and recognized as life-saving, along with essential health services for young children’s survival and healthy growth.”

The letter, confirmed to be an authentic draft from a coalition called Joining Forces, said, “It is critical that health workers are properly trained and able to provide non-discriminatory health services (including sexual and reproductive health) to adolescents and young people.”

During the Ebola crisis, the letter claims, “limited access to sexual and reproductive health information and services (including contraception and safe abortion) all contributed to the rise in teenage pregnancy rates and the number of maternal and child deaths.” It claimed that these conditions would be repeated in the COVID-19 crisis.

Joining Forces includes ChildFund Alliance, Plan International, Save the Children International, SOS Children’s Villages International, Terre des Hommes International Federation, and World Vision International.

The group’s six CEOs met with members of the European Commission and the European Parliament in February to “make sure the EU walks the talk on both the [UN Sustainable Development Goals] and the UN [Convention on the Rights of the Child].”

The children’s rights treaty does not mention sexual and reproductive health and rights or abortion, but UN staff include abortion in sexual and reproductive health programming. The committee that monitors compliance with the children’s treaty has urged nations to liberalize their abortion laws. While sexual and reproductive health is mentioned as a target in the Sustainable Development Goals, nations included only with previously agreed-upon meanings, which excluded abortion, controversial “comprehensive sexuality education” for children, and “sexual rights.”

Joining Forces member Save the Children co-sponsored an event last fall at the Wilson Center in Washington that examined ways to exploit humanitarian situations to change social norms, including those regarding sexual and reproductive health.

World Vision communications officer Sheryl Watkins responded on behalf of the 70-year-old Christian charitable organization in an email, writing, “The letter and attachments shown to us by the Friday Fax was a draft. At World Vision’s request, the language regarding abortion was removed. World Vision is pro-life. We believe life begins at conception, and World Vision does not provide, recommend, or refer women for abortions or methods of birth control that are proven to be abortifacient.” Watkins did not confirm by press time that “sexual and reproductive health and rights,” a term used to include abortion in EU humanitarian programming, was also removed from the final recommendations.

Joining Forces member Plan International part of a consortium of twelve top development organizations who sent a separate letter this week telling the EU development ministers that “challenges to accessing sexual and reproductive health information services—including contraception, safe abortion and HIV medications—will further exacerbate the risks to girls’ and women’s health and lives.”

The EU $17 billion EU aid program will reorient existing direct budget support, loans, and guarantees from the European Investment Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, according to EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell. A third of the aid is intended for African nations.

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