My Body, My Rights
Why this campaign?
PES Women’s 2010 campaign was “My Body, My Rights”. Under this umbrella slogan PES Women wanted to dedicate its 2010 campaign to the overarching theme of sexual and reproductive health rights. ‘My Body, My Rights’ was a commitment for PES Women with three windows of action: calling for universal maternal health, combating violence against women and an annual conference on sexual and reproductive rights.
Universal Maternal Health
The International Women’s Day, our first window of action, was set in the context of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action. The aim of the Beijing Platform for Action is to bring a global women’s rights agenda with specific objectives in different policy fields. However, fifteen years after its launch, the objectives were still far from being achieved in Europe and around the world especially with respect to women’s health rights and sexual rights. We even witnessed a backlash. Despite additional efforts through Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which contribute directly to improving women’s rights and enhancing gender equality, including maternal health, it seems that our targets will not be reached by 2015. Therefore, PES Women decided to launch a campaign “My Body, My Rights” with a special call on universal maternal health.
To strengthen our position in Europe but also globally, PES Women, ECOSY, the Global Progressive Forum and the Global Progressive Youth Forum, organised a meeting on the fringes of the CSW with our socialist and social democratic ministers and adopted a declaration calling on all governments to reiterate their commitment towards maternal health in order to ensure women’s empowerment in health rights, sexual rights, socio-economic and financial development.
Combating Violence against Women
For this window of action, PES Women held its statutory meeting in Madrid in the Headquarters of the Spanish Socialist Party, the PSOE, and met with Bibiana Aido, Spanish Minister for Equality to discuss combating domestic violence. PES Women issued and signed a declaration.
Sexual and Reproductive Rights
On 3 and 4 December 2010, PES Women held its annual conference on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights. See our programme , Zita Gurmai’s opening speech and read our conclusions.
On 27 September 2012, PES Women adopted a resolution on sexual and reproductive rights: “My Body, My Rights: Equal sexual and reproductive rights for all women in Europe“