EWEC High Level Steering Group Reaffirms Commitment to Agenda for Women, Children and Adolescents

Every Woman Every Child commenced the Decade of Action on 5 March 2020, with a meeting of its High-Level Steering Group (HLSG) co-chaired by Ms. Amina Mohammed, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, and H.E. Ms. Kersti Kaljulaid, President of the Republic of Estonia. Every Woman Every Child will fully support the call by the UN Secretary General for 2020 to be the year to usher in a decade of ambitious action to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals.

Ten years removed from its launch, the meeting celebrated achievements over the past decade including the steep declines in global maternal mortality and under-5 mortality rates, which would not have been as successful – or perhaps not attained at all – in the absence of dedicated, focused work through the Every Women Every Child partnership, including its landmark Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health.

Facing a major deadline in ten years for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the HLSG members confirmed that the EWEC agenda is more important and relevant today than ever. Discrimination, abuse and violence against women, children and adolescents erode physical and mental health. Unprecedented rates of unplanned urbanization, climate instability and environmental degradation are introducing new dangers to the health of women, children and adolescents. Conflicts are forcing people out of their homes and livelihoods at record levels. The realization of human rights remains seriously uneven or unattainable in many settings risking the reversal of hard-won advances in preventable maternal and child mortality and undermining the health of adolescents, in particular.

 As EWEC enters its second decade, this is an opportune time to make things right for all of those women, children and adolescents left behind. As the global community recommits to the Sustainable Development Goals, this decade stands to be exponentially transformative.