Every Woman Every Child
EWEC High Level Steering Group Reaffirms Commitment to Agenda for Women, Children and Adolescents
Ten years removed from its launch, the meeting celebrated achievements over the past decade including the steep declines in global maternal mortality and under-5 mortality rates, which would not have been as successful – or perhaps not attained at all – in the absence of dedicated, focused work through the Every Women Every Child partnership, including its landmark Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health.
Facing a major deadline in ten years for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the HLSG members confirmed that the EWEC agenda is more important and relevant today than ever. Discrimination, abuse and violence against women, children and adolescents erode physical and mental health. Unprecedented rates of unplanned urbanization, climate instability and environmental degradation are introducing new dangers to the health of women, children and adolescents. Conflicts are forcing people out of their homes and livelihoods at record levels. The realization of human rights remains seriously uneven or unattainable in many settings risking the reversal of hard-won advances in preventable maternal and child mortality and undermining the health of adolescents, in particular.
As EWEC enters its second decade, this is an opportune time to make things right for all of those women, children and adolescents left behind. As the global community recommits to the Sustainable Development Goals, this decade stands to be exponentially transformative.
Every Woman Every Child’s Second Decade
Every Woman Every Child (EWEC) was launched in 2010 by former UN Secretary-General H.E. Ban Ki-moon to catalyze a political movement to advance the health and well-being of women, children and adolescents everywhere. Since then, EWEC has been dedicated to the central, transformative promises of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its goals (SDGs): eradicating poverty in all its forms, ending discrimination and exclusion, and reducing inequalities and vulnerabilities to ensure that no one will be left behind.
In its second decade, EWEC is firmly aligned with the SDG 3 Global Action Plan (GAP) and the Resident Coordinator System. EWEC builds on the progress in reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health (RMNCAH) and accelerates action against the 2030 targets of the Global Strategy. EWEC now integrates more tightly with the broader Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) country-level action health for all delivery efforts in order to fast-track country-level implementation within the Decade of Action.
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