The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) adopted unanimously a very progressive Resolution 1975 (2014) “Stepping up action against global inequalities: Europe’s contribution to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) process”. The resolution represented the position of the entire European continent, the 47 Member States of the Council of Europe and is very supportive of our issues. Among the key actions to take is to promote “the guarantee of sexual and reproductive health and rights for women and girls”. The Rapporteur, Sir Alan Meale (UK, Labour) stressed that Europe’s contribution should consist first in stepping up efforts to reduce global and regional inequalities under the current MDG framework and urged Europe to take the lead in addressing the challenges such as gender inequality, high rates of violence against women and children and also the need to increase the efficiency of ODA.

In particular the Assembly called on CoE Members States to:

– para 8.3.1: to empower women and girls in all spheres of society;

– para 8.3.2: to promote the guarantee of sexual and reproductive health and rights for women and girls, in particular with a view to avoiding unwanted pregnancies and further reducing maternal mortality;

– para 8.3.3: to step up the fight against violence towards women and girls in the most committed manner through prevention programmes and campaigns, including measures to protect victims;

– para 8.3.4: create equal opportunities for women and young people to access quality education and decent jobs.

An anti-choice amendment requesting to delete the word sexual and reproductive “rights” has been defeated at both Committee and Plenary level.

The PACE resolution can be viewed here or under this link.
The debate and the speeches could be accessed here
The article on Assembly’s website is here.