Kenya, the host country of the Nairobi Summit on ICPD25, has made significant gains in advancing the health of women and mothers since 1994. The maternal mortality rate has dropped to 362 per 100,000 live births, and the average Kenyan woman now has less than four children.
But the country still has much work ahead to fulfill the promise of ICPD. More than 5,000 Kenyan women and adolescents still die each year from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth, and one in seven women that don't want to get pregnant is not using a modern contraceptive.
In an op-ed for the IPS News Agency, Kenyan foreign minister Monica Juma notes that for Kenya, filling these gaps is not just a matter of fulfilling the commitments the international community made 25 years ago in Cairo – it's also about rights.
"Every woman, regardless of her income or where she lives, has the right to information and services that allow her to determine for herself whether, when or how often she becomes pregnant, starts and stops her childbearing," she writes.
That's why, Ms. Juma adds, the Nairobi Summit will focus on concrete actions that governments can take meet the "three zeros" – zero preventable maternal deaths, zero unmet demand for contraception, and zero gender-based violence and harmful practices of child marriage against women and girls – by 2030.
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