A/HRC/39/26
relation to sexual and reproductive health and rights. 53 This could include their participation
in camp committees and decision-making and coordination mechanisms that concern,
directly or indirectly, sexual and reproductive health and rights.
50.
Forming strong partnerships with and financially supporting local women’s groups
is also critical for effective health service delivery. This enhances understanding on how
values, practices and beliefs impact sexual and reproductive health in a community and
consequently assists with the design, implementation and evaluation of culturally
acceptable and inclusive policies and programmes, while building trust with local
communities and ensuring access.54
4.
Sustainability and international assistance
51.
International assistance should be aimed at strengthening the national health systems
and supporting the State to fully resume and sustain its primary responsibilities as dutybearer. It is also critical to support efforts to bridge the development-humanitarian divide.
As has been observed by UNFPA, guaranteeing the sexual and reproductive health and
rights of women and adolescent girls will go a long way towards achieving the goal of
inclusive, equitable development, and can lead to more resilient societies, more capable of
withstanding crises and rebuilding in ways that lead to even greater resilience. 55
52.
The sustainability of interventions will increase where there is involvement and
ownership of affected communities and individuals to claim their rights and support for the
capacity of national and local actors to meet their obligations. Capacity-building with
national health service providers can be considered, including trainings on sexual and
reproductive health and rights, task shifting in the health system serving humanitarian
populations, and engagement of national and regional professional societies in affected
areas. 56 Sustainability also demands increased attention to the ways in which crises
exacerbate risks of particular individuals and populations.
53.
The Inter-Agency Field Manual emphasizes the need for all humanitarian actors,
including States, to work together and ensure a transition, as soon as possible, from the
Minimum Initial Services Package towards the integration of comprehensive sexual and
reproductive health services into primary health care. This would ideally be within 3–6
months but can also be within weeks. A human rights-based approach further stipulates
that, when States and other actors are in a position to move towards comprehensive care for
any particular aspect of sexual and reproductive health, including at the onset of an
emergency, they should do so as expeditiously as possible.
54.
Despite the upward trend of funding for reproductive health in emergencies, there
are still large gaps in terms of: (a) gender-sensitive funding across all humanitarian sectors;
(b) political commitment to increasing budgets for excluded groups; (c) meeting the need
for minimum services; and (d) limited capacity and/or an unwillingness of some donors and
Governments to commit resources towards sexual and reproductive health and rights in all
phases of an emergency.57
5.
Transparency and accountability
55.
Human rights accountability cuts across the entire programme cycle and entails
multiple, participatory and transparent forms of monitoring, review and oversight, including
administrative, social, political, legal and accountability of multiple humanitarian actors.
Besides judicial procedures, there are other mechanisms and processes to ensure
accountability, including for example national human rights institutions, health
53
54
55
56
57
14
Ibid. See also Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015); Sustainable Development Goals
(2015).
ActionAid, “On the frontline: Catalyzing women’s leadership in humanitarian action” (Johannesburg,
South Africa, 2016).
The State of World Population, p. 76
Submission by WHO.
2017 Evaluation of the Use of Inter-Agency Reproductive Health Kits for Crisis Situations, p. 15. The
State of World Population, p. 14.
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