High-level Roundtable: Women’s Leadership in the COVID-19 Response to Protect Every Woman and Every Child

EVENT BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic represents an unprecedented threat to the core focus of the Every Woman Every Child movement: the health and well-being of women, children and adolescents worldwide. Hard-earned progress in improving their ability to thrive and survive and in creating new opportunities for the world’s most vulnerable people is endangered on nearly all fronts. The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing vulnerabilities and failures in health, social, political and economic systems that ought to safeguard women, children and adolescents.

Following the World Health Assembly and the United Nations Women Rise for All Campaign, the Every Woman Every Child Secretariat, in partnership with the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH), and Women Deliver, is organising a High-Level Roundtable on Women’s Leadership in the COVID-19 Response to Protect Every Woman and Every Child.

This High-level Roundtable will be co-convened by H.E. Ms. Kersti Kaljulaid, President of Estonia, and Co-Chair of the Every Woman Every Child High Level Steering Group (HLSG); and Rt. Hon. Helen Clark, Former Prime Minister of New Zealand and Chair of the PMNCH Board; and will include prominent speakers from the United Nations, Governments and Civil Society.

OBJECTIVES

• To identify best practices and key actions that must be taken to safeguard gains made on Sexual & Reproductive Maternal, Newborn, Child & Adolescent Health (SRMNCAH) in the context of the pandemic.
• To raise awareness of the need to put women’s, children’s and adolescent’s health and well-being at the center of COVID-19 response efforts.
• To pre-position EWEC stakeholders for high level commitments to be announced at UNGA 2020.

EXPECTED OUTCOMES

• Action plan articulating best practices in safeguarding SRMNCAH gains within COVID-19 response and key steps necessary to place women, children and adolescents at the centre of the response.
• Articulation of appropriate benchmarks to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health and well-being, as a marker of the success of the broader COVID-19 response.
• Identification of champions to advocate for commitment to action and participate in a social media challenge to global donors, leaders and everyone responding to the crisis, to place women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health at the center of their efforts.