Invited to the Élysée Palace for the first meeting of the five-year term with development NGOs, Equipop challenged the President of the Republic on the role France must play in defending women's rights on the international stage. Emmanuel Macron made clear and unequivocal commitments, which Equipop and its civil society partners will be monitoring closely in the coming weeks.
On September 5, the President of the Republic received a delegation of NGOs to discuss development issues. The agenda focused in particular on the issue of women's rights. In discussing this fundamental lever for development, our association, representing the gender commission of Coordination SUD, placed particular emphasis on the issue of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), a cornerstone of women's rights.
"Wewanted to bring two points to the attention of the President of the Republic: the need to explicitly defend women's rights on the diplomatic stage, starting at the next United Nations General Assembly in two weeks, and the urgency of providing adequate funding to implement the two French strategies, Gender and Development, and Population/DSSR 2016-2020," recalls Aurélie Gal-Régniez, director of Equipop.
In response, Emmanuel Macron made clear commitments. Women's rights are a national cause in France and will be a priority for official development assistance. The president has also openly acknowledged that France currently ranks among the lowest of OECD donor countries in terms of funding for gender projects, and that real efforts are needed to bridge the gap between French ambitions and the reality of its actions. In diplomatic terms, the president has affirmed his desire to engage in frank and open dialogue with countries where women's rights are most crucial, particularly in Africa.
Emmanuel Macron also seems to have fully grasped the issues more specifically related to women's rights to control their own bodies. He has emphasized the importance of issues such as forced marriage, girls' education, and access to contraception. He has expressed his desire to expand partnerships with other donor countries on these issues.
At the start of this five-year term, women's rights, and in particular SRHR, which are cross-cutting and transformative issues if ever there were any, have therefore been clearly identified as having a role to play in shaping all French development policy. It was important that all of these messages were also heard by the ministers who stood alongside the President, namely Jean-Yves Le Drian, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Nicolas Hulot, Minister for Ecological and Solidarity Transition, Brune Poirson, Secretary of State to N. Hulot, and Frédérique Vidal, Minister of Higher Education, Research, and Innovation.
For Equipop, this statement from the highest level of government is satisfactory. It now needs to be translated into action. Will France contribute to the "She Decides" fund? Will it increase its contribution to UNFPA? Will it exercise genuine leadership in promoting access to contraception for African women through the Ouagadougou Partnership initiative? Will it support the actors and actresses of change on the ground? Equipop will remain extremely vigilant, alongside its partners in French civil society, as to the answers to these various questions.
Press contact: Nicolas Rainaud – Equilibres & Populations – nicolas.rainaud@equipop.org – +33 (0)6 73 72 25 37.
Notes to editors: -EQUIPOP Equilibres & Populations is an international solidarity organization created by doctors and journalists in 1993, in the context of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. Equilibres & Populations works to improve the status and living conditions of women, as a lever for fair and sustainable human development. Drawing on its specific expertise in sexual and reproductive health and rights, Equipop has gradually expanded its project to complementary fields of action (governance, education, economics) and systematically includes a gender-based approach.
