Raising our Voices: Global Campaigning for SRHR

In many ways, 2018 was a year of great accomplishments for WGNRR, among them was the co-coordination of September 28 International Safe Abortion Day, supporting and strengthening local abortion networks in the Philippines and Tanzania. We continued our partnership with Simavi for an SRHR advocacy work in Ghana and Tanzania. We also continued our strong engagement at the grassroots level, supporting our youth members and launched several widely attended activities at the national level. We continued our partnership with Amplify Change with the renewal of an abortion rights advocacy and the women & disability projects in Tanzania.  We also have exciting partnership with ARROW for an abortion rights advocacy in the Philippines.

But 2018 was not without its trials; in many ways it was also a difficult year for WGNRR, with the funding landscape for global SRHR networks becoming more and more challenging, resulting in considerable uncertainty about our long term future. Despite these challenges, the WGNRR team managed to continue its contributions towards to advance SRHR for all. 

As the global geo-political context threatens to become increasingly regressive, the struggle for realizing SRHR as human rights worldwide will no doubt become even more challenging. We at WGNRR stand ready and committed to seeking and strengthening partnerships, and consolidating our work on advocacy, campaigning, networking and capacity building, so as to counter rising conservatisms, as well as both retain and advance the significant gains in SRHR advocacy around the world. We also consider it critical that we continue to maintain our focus in advocating for even the most stigmatized SRHR issues, such as access to safe abortion services, and access to contraceptives for young women and adolescent girls. In this regard we see networking and ongoing collaboration as all the more crucial, and look forward to both building and continuing strong alliances with our partners.

 2019 is our 35th year! 2019, we are ready! 

During the past couple of months WGNRR has been very busy with the planning and implementing of the September 28 Campaign: International Safe Abortion Day. 

The Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR) engages in September 28 annual campaigning activities, conducted by Campaign and WGNRR members, as well as allies around the world, and as a fundamental aspect of our Global Campaigning for SRHR.

September 28 has been a regional campaign for decriminalisation of abortion in Latin America and Caribbean for nearly twenty years before being taken on by SRHR activists all over the world as a Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion in 2011.

In 2018 the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights, the International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion, Campaña Nacional por el Derecho al Aborto Legal y Gratuito, ASAP and ARROW, joined forces and created the “28 September Working Group” to coordinate campaign activities and launch a cohesive name and hashtag.

The activities that took place in 2018 stimulated and generated support for ongoing campaigns in countries where women are still endangered by unsafe abortion, threatened with criminal punishment, and subject to stigma in the absence of progressive laws and services that recognize safe abortion as a public health necessity and a fundamental human right.

Drawing on the previous years’ successes, this year we witnessed once more a wide and growing range of mobilizations, including "green wave" rallies all over the world, marches, conferences, cultural performances, focus groups, dialogues and an huge social media mobilization throughout the month of September, peaking towards September 28.

The social media outreach counted in millions of on-line users participating in on-line discussions with the hashtags #LetsTalkAbortion, #Sept28, and #28S. We can successfully report that the number of activities in the participating countries and among the international NGOs involved in the Campaign has grown, and their impact is greater.

Together with partners, we created more than 20 posters, illustrations and visual materials in collaboration with feminist artists @liberaljane and @roferrer. We also translated all of the materials into French, Spanish and Portuguese. 

The day has become a widely and internationally recognized day and it’s impact in social media has been the greatest yet. We have seen more reports of these activities, and more reports of publicly important speeches being made, reported in national newspaper articles and in the visual media too. The September 28 website http://www.september28.org/ as it has in the past years, served as a central platform for collecting information on international actions and joint on-line mobilizations. We also conducted 2 very succesful webinars under the theme: "Normalise abortion:It's part of our lives" where we had the participation of more than 50 abortion rights activists from all over the world. The first webinar was in collaboration with RHRN and with a special focus on the Africa region, and the second webinar was held in collaboration with inroads, and was a great conversation with activists from all over the world regarding their activities on normalising abortion.

Members have reported actions in more than 85 different countries, and we are still receiving activity reports and photos.

Overall the September 28 Campaign was a great success in talking about abortion and normalising abortion around the world. Testament of this were the numerous marches and rallies held around the world with activists wearing green scarfs. Hopefully the momentum will continue and next year's campaign will be even stronger. 

Links:

• Official site of September 28 Campaign
• September 28 on the news!
• 28 Abortion Rights Successes