Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to talk about a very important human right globally, and that is women's and families' right to control their own fertility. In the early 1950s a group of women and men started to campaign strongly for women's rights to plan their own families. Family planning as a human right challenged many social conventions and religious and cultural ideas of the time. Campaigners faced great hostility to gain acceptance of things that we take for granted today. Some people were imprisoned, but they emerged determined to work with different cultures, traditions, laws and religious attitudes to improve the lives of women and families around the world.

At the 3rd International Conference on Planned Parenthood in 1952, eight national family planning associations founded the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the IPPF. I am very pleased to say that, tomorrow in parliament, we will have the IPPF briefing us on their new focus in our region, which is the need for reproductive health services in times of humanitarian crisis. I am very pleased to say that Australia is one of the major partners in the work of the IPPF in this regard. Sixty years since 1952, the IPPF is a charity of 152 member associations working in 172 countries. The IPPF run 65,000 service points worldwide. In 2011 these facilities delivered over 89 million sexual and reproductive health services. The IPPF's vision is for a world in which all women, men and young people have access to the sexual and reproductive health information and services they want and need. As I say, tomorrow we will have the Australian chapter of the IPPF in this parliament, and Mr Tewodros Melesse, the director, who is of Ethiopian background but is an Australian permanent resident, will be here to brief us on the work the IPPF now undertakes in our region, particularly in response to humanitarian disasters.

Let us look at the work of the IPPF. They particularly focus on contraception, including the use of temporary, long-term or permanent methods to prevent pregnancy. Of course, in their promotion of condoms they also want to ensure communities understand the protection that condoms provide for prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. The IPPF's work also focuses on women's health, given the great inequalities globally that relate to women's sexual and reproductive health and rights. In some countries, particularly underdeveloped countries in our region, as many as one in seven women will die after becoming pregnant, or when they give birth to their children. Sexual rights are basic human rights but, around the world, they are denied to women, particularly, through violence, abuse and coercion, and through criminalisation and discrimination. Over 40 per cent of the IPPF's resources are devoted to addressing the needs of young people. Under 25s account for 50 per cent of new HIV infections, and girls and young women are the most vulnerable group. Too many impoverished women and girls are trafficked into the sex industry, particularly in our region, and the numbers are growing.

At global, regional and national levels, IPPF advocates to persuade governments and decision makers to promote sexual and reproductive health and rights in their populations, to change policy and legislation and to fund programs and service delivery. Increasingly, we are seeing women and girls as the majority of victims of humanitarian crises. Whether these crises come about through natural disasters or conflict, they present acute sexual and reproductive health challenges. Nine out of 10 of the countries worst affected by poor sexual and reproductive health are in fact in a state of humanitarian crisis.

IPPF is also at the forefront of efforts to ensure that a comprehensive response to HIV is located within the broader sexual and reproductive health framework. The Global Fund was in parliament today, and I was pleased to chair our forum with them—very well attended by members and senators, I am pleased to say. We heard from Dr Dybul that one of the serious outcomes of gender based violence, whether in our regional or globally, is that women are more likely to become infected with HIV. That is a tragic circumstance, where intimate partner violence is more likely to lead to those women contracting HIV. Until we have gender based equality, individuals face barriers deciding if, when and with whom to have sex; whether or not to use contraception; if, when and how many children to have; and how to seek health care. Too many women, in particular, are denied access or choices in those matters because of their lack of empowerment and equality. Every year 47,000 women die due to unsafe abortions. It is one of the three leading causes of maternal mortality globally. IPPF supports a woman's right to choose and to access safe abortion services.

IPPF has now initiated a program called SPRINT. I am pleased that Australia is one of the key partners and donors to this SPRINT program, which is about sexual and reproductive health services provided in crisis and post-crisis situations. The aim of the SPRINT program is to increase, for women and families, access to sexual and reproductive health services; to improve the capacity of health professionals; and to provide better information in communities in humanitarian crisis in the Asia-Pacific, South Asia and Africa regions.

We in Australia sometimes take our own great access to reproductive health services for granted. We believe that if it is easy for us to access services it must be comparatively simple for our near neighbours. Tragically, we are a region which is subject both to more frequent natural disasters—most recently in Fiji and to our north—and we are seeing a great deal of humanitarian crisis associated with conflict.

SPRINT has supported the training of over 4,000 humanitarian health worker policy and decision makers from 81 countries across the Asia-Pacific, South Asia and Africa regions. These trainees then work to coordinate the implementation of sexual and reproductive health services in natural disasters including: in the Solomon Islands when there were floods; in Afghanistan after the landslides; in Pakistan in the Sindh Arid Zone drought; in TemotuIsland, where there was a tsunami and earthquake; in Baluchistan, where there were earthquakes; in Kenya, when there were floods; in Uganda, when there was conflict and refugees were fleeing; in Indonesia, following the earthquakes; in the Philippines, following Typhoon Haikui, Typhoon Bopha, Tropical Storm Trami, the Zamboanga conflict and Typhon Haiyan; in Ethiopia, where there was drought and food insecurity; and in Kenya, when there was drought and food insecurity. All of these were in very recent times and in our region.

Australia is helping to fund SPRINT to train both local peoples and volunteers to be able to implement sexual and reproductive services to the victims of these disasters. The program has been made to integrate sexual and reproductive health with international health emergency management systems in several countries around the Asia-Pacific, in particular in the Philippines. SPRINT partners include the UNFPA and the FPOP. They are working to integrate the Minimum Initial Service Package, or MISP, into the country's Magna Carta for Women, and a landmark reproductive health bill—this is in the Philippines and we commend the Philippines for taking these measures, given they are so often subject to natural disasters as well as conflict within their borders.

During the first year and a half SPRINT reached more than 140,000 targeted victims and provided life saving sexual reproductive health assistance to more than 60,000 people—30,000 were women and girls in natural disasters and conflict areas across three regions.

I am also very pleased to say that we have had a great deal of cooperation with the University of New South Wales. It has launched a research team to conduct in-depth monitoring and evaluation of SPRINT's activities and it has contributed to the body of evidence on sexual and reproductive health needs in emergencies. The work has enabled SPRINT to improve its strategies, programs and curriculum.

ARHA and SPRINT held a joint Australian parliamentary tour to the Philippines and the Thai-Myanmar border, a little time ago, to highlight the need for sexual and reproductive health services in crisis and post crisis situations. There is great collaboration between the IPPF and the Australian government, which is a major donor and contributor to them, and also with ASEAN, the IFRC, the UNHCR, the UNFPA, the UNAIDS, the WHO, the Regional Inter-Agency Standing Committee, the Asia Pacific Emergency and Disaster Nursing Network and the Inter-Agency Working Group on Reproductive Health in Crisis. All of those agencies are key and critical in terms of helping with funding, training, capacity building and they need coordination. The IPPF is in the driver's seat to make sure that for the victims of these humanitarian crises—whether they are natural or conflict created—that coordination is there and it is working.

SPRINT also provides funding to support sexual and reproductive health responses in acute and protracted humanitarian emergencies across places—I have mentioned the Philippines, but they are also in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Timor-Leste, Ethiopia, Uganda, Cote d'Ivoire and the Solomon Islands. I am very pleased and proud that Australia is one of the key supporters of this special SPRINT program, which is part of the International Planned Parenthood Federation work. I know we will continue to be a major supporter of the sexual and reproductive health needs and programs for people in crisis and in post-crisis situations.

Sadly we currently seem to have more humanitarian crises associated with conflict in the globe than ever before, and the victims in those conflicts are increasingly women and children. Too often we overlook the most basic needs of the women in those circumstances, which is the attention they need for their reproductive health. It is very often a case of rape, of forced intercourse, in child marriages and child pregnancies. I know we all are horrified with the policies and the behaviour of ISIL as it prosecutes its terrorist acts and war in places like Syria and Iraq. Australia understands those crises and understands the sexual and reproductive health needs of women trapped in those circumstances. We will always be at the forefront in offering special support.

I commend the work of the IPPF. I look forward to chairing their forum tomorrow in this place. I am also so pleased that Australian aid has long been associated with supporting women and children, with some 80 per cent of our total Australian aid budget committed to programs and projects which have an empowering outcome for women and girls, particularly in our Indo-Asia Pacific region.

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