Annual Advocacy Objectives

A Review: WRA Global Advocacy Objectives 2011

2011 has been another great year for the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, working together and pushing for progress - bound by our common goal to ensure that pregnancy and childbirth are safe for every woman and every newborn in every country around the world.

We have capitalised on unprecedented commitments to the Global Strategy on Women’s and Children’s Health placing renewed focus on implementation and accountability at global, regional and national levels. We have monitored progress to ensure that commitments are realised; pushed for new commitments from Governments and other sectors and places working with a renewed focus on Health workers, especially midwives, better equipped and supported.

We have worked with champions, civil society partners national and grassroots advocates to ensure that Governments place girls and women at the heart of development policy - something we feel is more crucial than over as the global financial crisis continues to push millions of girls and women into extreme poverty.

Our membership has continued to grow at an impressive rate - with members now in 155 countries and National Alliances established in 15, and as we continue to grow, we increase our capacity to influence. We have reached out to new areas with a specific focus on respectful maternity care and joined new global partnerships to combat issues such as child marriage.

Below we have included some specific examples of where we made progress towards our 2011 Global Advocacy Objectives - as agreed by consultation with members and partners. We will make our 2012 objectives available shortly and if you have any questions in the meantime please do not hesitate to contact Maeve Shearlaw, Policy and Advocacy Coordinator mshearlaw@whiteribbonalliance.org

Hold governments to account to deliver on pledges made to maternal, newborn and child health in 2010

Demanding Accountability

The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood has been one of the leading grassroots organisations working to hold leaders to account for their recent commitments as part of the Every Woman Every Child Initiative. 

• At the global level, have we have featured Every Woman Every Child as our action of the month in May and September; engaged with the Commission for Information and Accountability for Women and Children’s Health; and contributed to the development of plans to roll out the Commission Recommendations
• In Uganda, WRA petitioned parliamentarians urging them to demand action from the Ministry of Health and the Presidency.  As part of their budget appropriations advocacy, Uganda’s Parliament identified UGX 5.57 billion and reallocated this to facilitate recruitment of health workers at lower level health centers.
• In Tanzania, WRA supported the formation of a Parliamentary Group for Safe Motherhood which has stimulated the involvement of more MPs to be more engaged in maternal, newborn and child health issues.  They are currently working on a safe motherhood bill and developing accountability mechanisms to ensure promises are delivered.
• In Tanzania, as a result of WRA’s national and district level advocacy, the Ministry of Planning has instructed every district to include a specific budget line for maternal and newborn health. New budget templates have been developed and any budget that leaves this detail out will be rejected by the Ministry of Health.
• In Nigeria, WRA have been working with UNFPA and other member organizations to set up a Score Card Development Committee who have developed success indicators to track government commitments to women and children. The alliance has also tirelessly campaigned for the President to sign the National Health Bill guaranteeing Nigerian women, newborns and children quality and efficient health care; and WRA Nigeria convened a national stakeholder consultation on developing guidance for the community-based use of misoprostol (health center level.)
• To complement these accountability efforts at the Global and National levels, the Global Secretariat has awarded accountability grants to 4 WRA member organisations working at the grassroots level
  • In Bolivia, Family Care International worked with the Ministry of Health, indigenous women and other partners on a framework to incorporate Traditional Birth Attendants in the health-care system as health agents and to support the development of an evidence-based regulatory framework for TBAs applying a cultural and rights-based approach to increase the acceptability to women of facility-based maternity care.
  • In Pakistan, Health Service Academy created a multimedia primer detailing maternal health policy and the cost of not investing in maternal health. This is being used to influence policy makers at the federal and provincial levels
  • In India the Institute for Policy Research and Training has built on the success of the Orissa public hearings and checklists, developing a community scorecard to regulate action from the community to facility level
  • In Nigeria Friends in Life Education Peer Club, worked with the media and mobilized key champions, urging the Governor of Imo State to uphold the Gender Equity Law.

Secure further pledges to the United Nations Secretary General's Strategy for Women and Children's Health, particularly on health workers

Pushing for new commitments & priorities

While demanding accountability on commitments that have been made, WRA has also been working tirelessly to put key issues on the political agenda, including: the need for more health workers and midwives and respectful maternity care.

• WRA co-lead the development of a global health workers campaign (with more than 300 organizations uniting to theask) and supported the development of specific national level policy asks and advocacy strategies.   Seven countries--Uganda, Tanzania, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal and Nigeria—implemented national advocacy strategies. We have held public hearings and rallies, contributed to parliamentary discussions and raised the profile at the global level through public campaigning and social media in the run up to the UN General Assembly.   At the UNGA, Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon used his key note speech at the Every Woman Every Child event to highlight health workers as the ‘unsung heroes’ in achieving the MDGs and a high-level side event served as a platform for new commitments from donor, national, and private sector stakeholders.  
• As part of our call for “More health workers, better supported” we have put a specific focus on midwives - critical to ensuring that women receive the best possible care during childbirth. At the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) Conference in Durban we premiered the ‘’stories of midwives’’ film and launched the ‘Midwives Save Lives’ petition with the ICM and Save the Children - this was signed by over 5,000 midwives from 80 countries across the world and delivered to  global leaders ahead of the United Nations General Assembly in September. WRA was also a key partner in developing and launching UNFPA’s first ever State of the World’s Midwifery Report and helped to disseminate stories around the launch in the media in 6 countries.
• Major successes at the National Level due to national or district advocacy around Health Workers include:
  • In India, the National Government agreed to issue a statement on ensuring ‘’Birth Preparedness, Complication Readiness’’’ for every pregnant woman in the country
  • In Uganda, WRA persuaded the government to make a commitment to Every Women Every Child  http://everywomaneverychild.org/commitments/governments
  • In Indonesia, the Ministry of Health has agreed to revaluate breastfeeding regulations a direct result of advocacy from the National Movement of Mother and Child Health of which APPI (WRA Indonesia) was part of. The Ministry is also working closely with APPI (WRA Indonesia) to inform communities on the childbirth insurance scheme.
  • In Bangladesh,  the WRA has worked with stakeholders including WHO and the nursing council to brief policy makers and implementers on the newly developed midwifery strategy –  a core component of Bangladesh’s commitment to the Global Strategy
  • In Uganda, a focused district level campaign (in two districts) led to a triple increase in the numbers of health workers deployed and put on the payroll  (among them were 24 enrolled midwives, 18 nursing officers and 58 enrolled comprehensive nurses. The District Health Officer in Kabale made it clear (on video) that the increased recruitment of health workers, especially midwives in the district was due to WRA campaigning (petitions to MPs and local leaders to put health workers on the payroll).

• Social Media was integral in helping us to raise the profile of maternal health and health worker campaigns in the run up to and at the UNGA.  WRA Global Patron Sarah Brown  (1,165,374 followers) and champions Arianna Huffington (797,794 followers) and Donna Karan (14,447 followers) regularly tweeted about health workers; WRA members (and health workers) from Bangladesh and Kenya participated in a ‘’Voices from the Frontlines’’ panel discussion in the Digital Media Lounge at the Social Good Summit; the #healthworkers hash tag had 18 million impressions on twitter, had over 1,200 contributors and reached 4.9 million twitter users in the week leading up to the UNGA.

• Finally, throughout 2011 we have used our Action of the Month and partnership networks to promote issues related to maternal health and to support advocacy initiatives around broader development issues providing members with at least one concrete action to engage with.

Advocate for removal of barriers to quality care, including the elevation of women's rights

Championing Girls and Women

The White Ribbon Alliance has been working partnerships at global and national levels to strengthen grassroots activism calling for a better world for girls and women, champions’ rights - especially those who live in world’s poorest countries.

• International Women’s Day (March 8^th) was a key mobilisation moment with members all over the world collecting stories for the "Dreams for My Daughter" project and holding dinner parties to celebrate women all over the world. We saw great successes in getting media coverage print, radio and TV outlets in a dozen countries ran 86 news items featuring WRA Alliances, Members and Champions with 42 pieces running on IWD itself.
• The WRA has convened a multi-sectoral group to begin the development of a campaign on the promotion of Respectful Maternity Care. Disrespect and abuse in childbirth is a global problem and, as evidence is revealing, in many cases is a more powerful deterrent than distance or money for women seeking skilled care during birth. A Charter on the Universal Rights of Childbearing Women has been established.  The poster version of the charter is attached.   Other materials will be disseminated as part of WRA’s January Action of the Month
• The WRA Global Secretariat played an integral role in the development and launch of Girls not Brides a global civil society partnership to End Child Marriage - led by the Elders, a group of eminent global leaders. A number of WRA National Alliances, including Yemen, Bangladesh, and India (state level) have had a specific focus on child marriage in their advocacy plans and will continue to do so through 2012.   WRA organized a Parliamentary Hearing in Sweden – where we involved the CEO of The Elders to join Theresa Shaver and WRA Board member and Uganda Parliamentarian Beatrice Rwakimari to speak about child marriage/link to MH.  WRA also organized a panel discussion on the issue, highlighting Girls Not Brides at the Women, Inspiration and Enterprise symposium in New York.
• In October the WRA partnered with UNFPA to support their ‘’7 Billion Reasons’’ Campaign to mark the day when the world’s population reached 7 billion people. We used our Action of the Month to advocate for a greater investment in the reproductive rights of women and girls to prevent the deaths of 1,000 women every day from complications of pregnancy and childbirth.