Date: 2017-09-29 16:46:14 ID: 1718
N’Djamena, 28 September 2017 – A delegation of the West Africa Health Organisation, (WAHO), led by its Deputy Director General, Dr Laurent ASSOGBA, participates from 28 to 30 September 2017, in Ndjamena, in a Regional Advocacy Workshop on issues of Sexual and Reproductive Health in West Africa, organised by the NGO CARE International, with technical support from WAHO.
This workshop, presided over by Mrs Ngarbatna Carmel Sou IV, Minister of Health of Chad, brought together 10 West African countries in which CARE International operates, namely Benin, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, Togo and Chad.
The aim of the workshop is to share the results of the “Study on policies and advocacy on sexual and reproductive health rights in West Africa” and, on the basis of these results, arrive at a consensus on the priority advocacy objectives on the issue in the region.
The Deputy Director General, in his speech delivered during the opening ceremony, reminded the audience of the universality of the right to procreation as a Human Right. However, he indicated that in spite of the acknowledgment by most institutions and international legal instruments ratified by States, their effectiveness is relative from one State to the other, thereby revealing, for some of them, either the existence of legal or non-legal barriers in reproductive health, or otherwise a mismatch between reproductive health policies, programmes and strategies and the corresponding legal framework, or finally the inadequacy, inherent gaps or obsoleteness of some legal instruments.
For Dr ASSOGBA, the West Africa Health Organisation is conscious of the fact that the effectiveness of these rights is a long process, which evolves at the pace of the development of societies. That is why it programmed for 2018, within the framework of its principal programmes funded by the French Development Agency (AFD), the “regional Demographic, Sexual and Reproductive Health Programme (DEMSAN)”, advocacy activities for the attention of honourable members of parliament, Governments, political, administrative, traditional, and religious leaders for the effectiveness of sexual and reproductive rights in the region.
WAHO, continued the Deputy Director General, will not spare any efforts to technically and/or financially, if possible, support any initiative aiming at the effectiveness of sexual and reproductive rights in our region.
The Deputy Director General reaffirmed his conviction that at the end of the deliberations of the workshop the international community will be further sensitised on the rights to procreation, and that our Heads of State and Government, our parliamentarians, who have at heart the development of our countries, will give all the attention required to the various advocacy statements that will come out of this workshop for which he expressed the best of success. He ended his speech with an expression of gratitude to the Government and people of Chad for all the arrangements made and the facilities provided to enable all participants have a pleasant stay on the free african soil of Chad.