Rep. Marcoleta Attends Global Summit of Parliamentarians Members of parliaments from G8 and G20 countries and from countries across Africa, the America’s, Asia and Europe have come together for a 2-day meeting (May 16-17) at the French National Assembly ahead of the forthcoming G8 Summit in Deauville. France, the country of human rights, currently holds the G8 Presidency and accordingly, 68 parliamentarians met to draw the world’s attention to two aspects of human rights that are the most neglected at present — the situation facing girls and adolescent women and the challenges posed by global population dynamics at present.

The facts confronted are:

• An estimated 215 million women in the developing world have an unmet need for modern contraception.
• More than 60 million give birth each year without antenatal, delivery and newborn care.

If the need for family planning and maternal and newborn health services were met simultaneously,

• unintended pregnancies would drop by more than two thirds, from 75 million in 2008 to 22 million per year;
• maternal deaths would drop by 70-72% and newborn deaths by 44%;
• the annual number of maternal deaths would decline by 240,000-390,000; and
• the annual number of newborn deaths would decline by 1.6 million from current level.

The total cost of meeting the existing need for modern family planning and maternal and newborn health services would be $24.6 billion, an increase of $12.8 billion annually.

• Fulfilling the global unmet need for modern family planning methods would cost $3.6 billion (in 2008 U.S. dollars), in addition to the current $3.1 billion investment – for a total of $6.7 billion annually.
• Providing maternal and newborn care to all pregnant women and their newborns would increase current spending from $8.7 billion to $17.9 billion, assuming that unmet need for effective contraceptives is met.

Part of the "Parliamentary Appeal" passed after the 2-day summit reads:

"We, Members of Parliaments, commit ourselves to supporting our governments in achieving their promises to guarantee health, dignity and rights to every human being, and to fight against poverty in a sustained manner. Every woman, regardless of where she comes from, has the right to have the number of children she wants, and to achieve this she must have access to information, services, technologies and the means she requires that will enable her to exercise this right. For this reason we reaffirm the right of the individual, and thereby the necessity — whilst respecting individuals’ personal beliefs — to separate religion and politics as the first condition for achieving this goal

Providing universal access to sexual and reproductive health. This should be achieved by ensuring that contraceptives are freely available and by eliminating the obstacles people face in obtaining family planning, and by supporting proposed legislations and the services required for safe abortions to be able to take place. The 215 million couples that want to employ a means of contraception and who do not have access to family planning must also receive ambitious political and legislative support."