Thanks so much.
Thank you for having me today, and for the topic of this critical and important study.
I represent a partnership of over 100 organizations, private sector entities, research institutions and civil society organizations based in Canada. They work here and around the world to promote women and children's health and rights.
I carry many stories of the importance of this particular issue. They include my personal story of becoming a mother a few years shy of my 20th birthday, the stories of my daughters, the stories of my nieces and the stories of the many women I've met while travelling across this country and around the globe. One consistent theme comes out. I think it's been touched on by both of our speakers.
That theme is choice—choice about when, with whom and whether to have children, and how many. This is not just a choice about today. It is an intergenerational choice about the future for yourself and your ability to attain education, a livelihood, employment and economic security for yourself and your family. It's a choice about how you want to build your community. These are choices women are making across all areas of this globe, and they are absolutely critical. In fact, they touch on every aspect of international development.
In 2019, over 218 million women and girls of reproductive age were unable to properly access SRHR in low- and middle-income countries. That situation has only grown and worsened since the pandemic. Not only has progress been reversed in some places; it has slipped behind. Adolescent advocates, women and girls in the communities we're talking about are telling us one thing: They're reinforcing the idea that their needs are being deprioritized in the context of the pandemic and sidelined as non-essential. For any woman of reproductive age who is sexually active, the idea of sidelining access to contraception is a joke, and it is a problem.
What does this mean? Our projections tell us that a 12% average decline in access to modern contraception would result in an additional 734,000 unintended pregnancies. A 25% average decline in essential pregnancy-related care would result in an additional 134,000 obstetric complications and 3,400 maternal deaths. Already, in the space of these testimonies, one woman has died every two minutes globally as a result of childbirth or pregnancy.
Let me underscore that these are perfectly preventable deaths. They are happening in places that don't have money, not in places where there is access to health care. There is no innovation needed here, but simply a scale-up in doing more of what we know we need to do.
A 23% shift from safe to unsafe abortions will lead to an additional 491,000 unsafe abortions. There are real people behind these numbers. Investment, coupled with cohesive policy that ensures SRHR is not a siloed or sidelined issue, is critical. We need to invest in intentional, innovative actions that are multisectoral and that integrate social determinants of health that are central to achieving equitable access to health services for women, adolescent girls and children—and to their futures.
What this means for Canada is that we cannot mask, divert or subvert the funds we have clearly allocated to SRHR. We must meet our commitments for consistent, stable and predictable increases to this funding, which means successfully scaling up to the direct investment of $700 million in SRHR by the end of this year.
However, investment alone is not enough. The erosion of rights of women, girls, children and communities means we need a multi-faceted approach to ensure rights are not further sidelined. We have to get organized in our diplomacy and foreign policy, and line up with a cohesive strategy around SRHR.
The Canadian Partnership for Women and Children's Health has three recommendations in this regard.
The first is that Canada scale up its spending, as it has committed to doing. This means counting and tracking what we are spending and that you, as parliamentarians, hold Global Affairs Canada and us, the actors in civil society, accountable.
The second is that Canada embrace and act on its SRHR leadership role globally, much as it did for the Muskoka initiative, and push other donors to prioritize women and children's health as a key issue—not a sidelined issue or one to be disregarded when conflict and crisis emerge.
The final one is that Canada continue to invest in a comprehensive health agenda that prioritizes the health rights of women and children and seeks to regain the progress lost over the pandemic. This must and should be our priority for our government, now and into the future.
Thank you very much.