The Ever-Evolving Future for Women Deliver
As we approach the end of 2023, like many of you, I find myself reflecting on the events of this year and the tireless efforts of the global feminist movement. The ongoing horror and violence inflicted upon innocent girls and women in regions like Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Ethiopia — just to name a few — are stark reminders of why our work is both challenging and crucial.
Even as an optimist, I need to remind myself of the energy and hope that I felt earlier this year the at Women Deliver 2023 Conference (WD2023) as a source of resilience amidst the daily bombardment of horrific news happening in the world. In those moments, I keep coming back to Mary Robinson, Former President of Ireland and current Chair of The Elders, quoting Jade Begay of the NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led activist organization in the United States, on the WD2023 plenary stage: “What if our best world is still in front of us?” I wholeheartedly believe that our optimal world lies ahead and is well within reach, especially as I look back at the positive strides our movement achieved this year. These moments and accomplishments are a testament to the fact that the feminist movement is powerful and that we need each other to positively impact the lives of girls and women worldwide.
Women Deliver in 2024 and Beyond
There is so much more to do in the face of ever-growing global obstacles. We, at Women Deliver, remain committed to working for change in 2024. To this end, we recently held a staff retreat to reflect and delve into what kind of organization we aspire to be moving forward. We reminded ourselves that, at our core, we focus on the bodily autonomy and integrity of girls and women through the realization of their full sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR), which is the foundation for gender equality.
At the retreat, we brought together our thinking about our work, our purpose, and our goals and committed to the following:
· We aspire to be a feminist organization. We recognize that we have not achieved this goal yet, and that — crucially — we may never consider the job done. For Women Deliver to be a feminist organization, we believe we must constantly interrogate our values, principals, and ways of working. Our vision is not only to be a feminist organization, but also to be one that is transparent and collaborative.
· We will intensify our focus on advocating for adolescent girls. It is our belief that if we aim to change the life course of women, then we must begin at adolescence — a time when girls’ choices and opportunities begin to shrink through the life-altering decisions made by others for them, like pulling them out of school, or forcing them into marriage and childbirth before they are old enough. These actions by others set the course of the rest of an adolescent girl’s life with little or no say from her. We also committed to working on three areas that represent some of the most pressing issues facing adolescent girls today: the climate crisis, ever-growing anti-rights movements, and ensuring that SRHR is integrated into all global discussions on health systems — focusing on universal health coverage for the next few years.
· We must transform global decision-making spaces. Too often, international norms, standards, and narratives are developed in exclusive forums and meetings by decision-makers from global minority countries who have little to no firsthand understanding of the challenges faced by the majority of adolescent girls and women worldwide. The international norms and standards that are set in these global spaces have powerful ripple effects on regional, national, and even community policies and priorities that directly impact women and adolescent girls. There is an urgent need to overturn this long-standing colonial norm that was created in the last century. Women Deliver firmly believes that as an international NGO of the 21st Century, our focus should be on global norm and standard setting spaces — specifically, changing who is in the room, whose voices are heard, and how decisions are made. This includes stepping back our presence and power in global spaces to make room and hand the mic to traditionally ignored experts and voices.
· We must continue to question, learn, and change ourselves as an organization. Not only is it good practice, but we must live up to -and exceed — the transformation commitments we made as a part of our reckoning in 2020. As a team, we will continue to re-examine our structures and systems to ensure that we remain an organization striving to be anti-racist and anti-colonial. It is our hope that we will take these internal changes and apply them externally as we continue to work with our global partners within the feminist movement.
While I take pride in reflecting on our achievements this year and feel privileged to share Women Deliver’s goals for the future, we must also remind ourselves of the prevailing inequalities and injustices that we continue to see globally. The challenges that we face as an organization and a feminist movement are immense. Across the globe, we continue to see emerging threats to the rights and well-being of women and adolescent girls, through conflicts, neo-colonial exploitation, or a lack of political will to implement sustainable change. From the continued rise of anti-rights movements to the climate crisis, and restrictions on girls’ and women’s bodily autonomy and SRHR, it is important that we do not lose hope. The ongoing violence in too many countries worldwide serves as a stark reminder that our work is far from done. We must hold our beliefs steadfast and know that through our continued collaboration, we can and will create a more equitable world for all.
