Imagine a world in which the laws and policies of every country allowed women to fully enjoy their reproductive rights. While this is still a distant goal, a confluence of factors has enabled women’s health and rights advocates to bring it into focus. The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and the 1995 […]

ARROW marked the year 2005 with a number of firsts for the organisation: 1. In January, ARROW saw the transition from the co- founder and Executive Director of ARROW, Rashidah Abdullah, to the new in-coming Executive Director, Saira Shameem; 2. ARROW published and launched two critical publications this year – Monitoring Ten Years of ICPD […]

In 2009, the women’s movement will mark the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the 15th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD); yet, in all these years, the multifarious forms of gender-based violence across the globe have […]

Gender-based violence was a part of the everyday reality of many of the women from Rural Women’s Social Education Centre (RUWSEC), Chengalpattu, in Tamil Nadu, South India. While we encountered many forms of gender-based violence, including sexual assault and violence on young women who transgressed accepted norms of sexual conduct, spousal violence was by far […]

Advocacy for family planning education and services in Malaysia began with the pioneering work of concerned individuals and medical practitioners in the early 1950s. The first Family Planning Association (FPA) was registered in 1953 in the state of Selangor and in 1958, four state FPAs formed the Federation of Family Planning Associations, Malaysia (FFPAM). Today […]

Indonesia’s reproductive health status has been greatly affected by the social, economic and political circumstances in the country since 1999. The Government of Indonesia (GOI) cited the economic crisis as the main cause for the failure of numerous sexual and reproductive health programmes. Another oft-referred-to challenge was the frequent changes in governmental leadership (three presidents […]

The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) marked an important moment in the history of women’s reproductive health and rights the world over, as well as the further recognition that women’s empowerment and full participation in political, social and economic life were necessary conditions for development and progress to take place. Indeed with […]

2004 was significant as the year in which the ten year implementation of both the Cairo and Beijing Conferences were assessed. ARROW and country partners entered these processes and participated full of enthusiasm and energy taking part in five regional and three international meetings. ARROW ensured that the key issues of the women’s health and […]

There has been considerable progress in China in the field of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) since the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994. Following on the ICPD, the Chinese Government collaborated with NGOs to make a number of policy changes that relate broadly to family planning, public health, and […]

The State of the World Population Report 2003 (UNFPA) estimates that Nepal’s maternal mortality rate (MMR) has doubled in the past seven years and stands at 905 per 100,000. After Afghanistan, which has a mortality rate of 1,276 per 100,000, Nepal has the second highest mortality rate in South Asia. The present moment is critical […]