When disaster strikes: How the EU can help protect women’s and girls’ health and rights

Imagine how it must feel to be separated from your family, forced to flee your home and then find yourself living in a tent, among strangers, vulnerable to sexual violence. Imagine giving birth in these unsafe and unhygienic circumstances, or caring for a newborn baby, or simply trying to keep yourself clean and healthy so that you can get on with the mammoth task of rebuilding your life, your home, your community.

11 July 2015 is World Population Day. This year the focus is on vulnerable populations in emergencies. The situations described above are a reality for a growing number of women, children and adolescents affected by humanitarian crises. They make up 75 to 80% of the estimated 65 million people who have been forcibly displaced from their homes by conflict or natural disasters. The UN Population Fund estimated that in Nepal, 126,000 pregnant women and girls were affected by the recent earthquake, and about 40,000 were estimated to be at increased risk of sexual and gender-based violence.  

Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) is a basic human right, but when disaster strikes, services such as family planning are often neglected or ignored. In the aftermath of a crisis, women and girls face very particular sets of challenges, especially if they are pregnant, new mothers, or simply if they have their period. The risks associated with sexual violence also escalate when populations are being displaced or law and order have broken down.

For many women, girls and other vulnerable people, access to at least a minimum level of SRH services can ensure safety, dignity and health. NGOs and UN agencies are working with governments and other partners around the world to ensure that this is the case through the provision of the Minimum Initial Service Package (MISP), a set of priority SRH-related activities and services. These efforts are crucial for individuals, families and communities striving to recover.

It is encouraging that the EU appears to recognise this reality. On 26 May, EU ministers acknowledged that natural and manmade disaster situations disproportionately affect women and girls. They reiterated their longstanding support for people’s basic human right to make their own decisions about their sexuality and SRH – a commitment encompassing both the EU’s response to humanitarian crises and its broader development policy.

This is promising given that the world still has such a long way to go to meet women’s needs when it comes to reproductive health and family planning €“ in crisis situations or not. Globally, 225 million women are still not able to access an effective method of contraception to avoid or delay pregnancy, even though they want to. Increased political leadership and financial support from governments worldwide are thus critical.

This year on 11 July, as world leaders prepare to adopt the SDGs, EU Ministers have given us reason to hope that they are serious about putting SRHR at the heart of the new global framework, and making 2015 the year we deliver on health, well-being and human rights for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.