In Asia-Pacific, women are lagging behind in terms of decision-making and political power; and female economic activity declined since 1990 in Bangladesh, China, Cambodia, India, Thailand, and Vietnam despite overall national economic growth. The evidence demonstrated what we have already heard from our partners working on the ground that, after all these years, governments’ uptake of the ICPD agenda has been inconsistent.
The driving frameworks which would help our partners and our constituencies ‘repoliticise’ the SRHR agenda in Asia in the lead-up to 2015 are lacking. In 2011, in preparation for the regional meeting
– ‘Beyond ICPD and the MDGs: NGOs strategizing for SRHR in Asia-Pacific’ – we embarked on a survey, which was initiated during the 6th Asia- Paci c Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights in Yogyakarta, Indonesia to again ask NGOs in our region what the key issues of the region are, and from that, derive the thematic issues that were presented at the meeting and in this publication.
Five of those thematic issues are presented in this publication. These include the thematic issues of universal access to sexual and reproductive health; poverty; migration , climate change and religious extremisms and the impact of these issues on SRHR in the Asia-Pacific.
