Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 23 to 25 April this year I was privileged to attend the International Parliamentarians' Conference on the Implementation of the Program of Action for the Conference on Population Development. This conference, held in Stockholm, was organised by the UN Population Fund and the European Parliamentary PD Forum. It came on the 20th anniversary of the Cairo Program of Action. Our panel discussions and debates focused on the critical importance of protecting the rights of women and girls and adolescents. More than 260 parliamentarians from 134 countries came together to debate these issues and, in the end, to produce a communique to set a course of action beyond 2014. We hope this will be taken up by the General Assembly of the UN when it looks at its own post-2014 action on 22 September this year.

In our communique we recognise the importance of the interlinkages in eradicating poverty and social inequities; achieving universal access to good school education; gender equality; achieving universal health coverage; maternal and child health; expanding high-quality family planning services and access to a mix of modern contraceptive methods which take into account client choices and clinical needs; promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights; preventing and treating sexual harmful infections; eliminating gender based violence as well as harmful practices against women and girls; and addressing the health and other impacts of alcohol and drug abuse. I was particularly pleased when we included the reference to alcohol, given that it is too often not included in any of these references to the rights of women and girls—and we know foetal alcohol spectrum disorder is a global epidemic at this time. (Time expired)