UNITED NATIONS AGENCIES PROVIDING 'REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH CARE' PACKAGE FOR REFUGEES IN GREAT LAKES REGION
Press Release
POP/627
REF/1155
UNITED NATIONS AGENCIES PROVIDING 'REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH CARE' PACKAGE FOR REFUGEES IN GREAT LAKES REGION
19961115 Initiative Follows Policy Agreed in 1995; Victims of Emergency Have Same Human Rights as All People, Says Population Fund DirectorNEW YORK, 15 November (UNFPA) -- The United Nations and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies agreed today to provide emergency reproductive health care for refugees in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa. The initiative represents the first time that reproductive health care will be included in emergency assistance at the outset of a crisis.
The project will be funded by $500,000 from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). It will be executed and coordinated by the Federation in full cooperation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and non-governmental organizations. The project is in response to the reproductive health care needs of Rwandese and Burundese refugees in the rapidly changing situation in Zaire.
"The United Nations Population Fund recognized that refugees and internally displaced persons, and persons in all emergency situations, have the same vital human rights, including the right to reproductive health, as people in any community", said the Fund's Executive Director, Dr. Nafis Sadik.
The centrepiece of the new initiative is a "package" of reproductive health care services, designed during the Interagency Symposium on Reproductive Health in Refugee Situations held in June 1995. The "package" will be added to the services the Federation provides in emergency situations and will address: family planning, including contraception; assisted childbirth; complications connected with unsafe abortions; sexual violence, including rape; and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. The new services will also include care and post-coital contraception for sexually violated women and unprotected, unexpected coitus.
The pilot programme, which will last for six months, could reach approximately 1 million people and will focus on the more than 220,000 women of reproductive age currently estimated to be in the region. It will be
delivered through non-governmental organizations working in the field with the UNHCR and the Federation.
The initiative grew out of a recognition of the unmet need for reproductive health in emergency situations. The current Great Lakes conflict erupted as the Federation, the UNHCR and the UNFPA were in the final stages of agreeing on a common strategy to offer reproductive health care services in refugee camps in the region.
The new reproductive health care initiative will be integrated in the Federation's usual emergency assistance, and will be implemented as soon as the situation in the area becomes sufficiently stable.
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