Commonwealth People’s Forum
Commonwealth People’s Forum 21-25 November 2005
Reproductive Health in the Fight Against Poverty
Networking & Building Partnerships
SOS Malta held a workshop during the Commonwealth People's Forum 2005 on Monday 21 November at 11.30 am in the Girolomo Cassar Hall at the Meditterranean Conference Centre, Valletta.
The powerpoint presentations presented during the workshop can be download by clicking on the names of the speakers
Speakers :
Mr Frans Baneke
Frans Baneke (1947), a Dutch national, studied Development Economics at the Amsterdam University. He then worked for UNDP in Manila, Philippines, and the Dutch Ministry for Foreign Affairs at the Investments and Banks desk. For the next 20 years, he was employed by the Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO), dealing with numerous private investment finance projects and development banks in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. He acted as FMO’s representative in Jakarta, Indonesia for four years. He then served as General Secretary of the European Development Finance Institutions in Brussels, Belgium, and Managing Director of the Africa Management Services Company (AMSCO), a project of UNDP and the World Bank Group, before accepting his present position as Executive Director of the Dutch NGO “World Population Foundation” (WPF).
In February 2005 he was elected Chairman of EuroNGO’s, the European platform of NGO’s with focus on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights.
Dr Frances Camilleri Cassar
Dr Frances Camilleri-Cassar is a social scientist and experienced researcher with special interest in welfare states and gender regimes and the implications of EU enlargement for Malta’s labour market and its social policy. In 2004 she completed a doctoral degree with Distinction at the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, after being awarded a scholarship for post graduate studies by the University of Malta. She lectures at the University of Malta and is the author of several publications.
Mr Shaun Grech
Shaun Grech is co-founder and coordinator of Integra Foundation, an NGO working to facilitate the integration of minority groups into mainstream society, with a special focus on refugees and asylum seekers. Integra Foundation is also currently the national focal point for Aids & Mobility Europe.
Shaun has also worked extensively in Latin America in rural community development projects and was responsible for kickstarting a number of micro-enterprises in select resource-poor rural areas in the region. Special interest areas include: poverty & poverty reduction, rural development, gender & development, and disability.
The workshop was chaired by Ms Nicolette Zammit Lupi Project Manager SOS Malta.
The workshop rapporter was Ms Maria Pisani Integra Foundation.
The workshop was organised by Ms Claudia Taylor East Programmes Director SOS Malta and by Ms Lilian Micelli Farrugia Chairman SOS Malta.
The event was kindly sponsored by the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Malta.
Statement by Participants:
We, representatives from Malta, Samoa, Cameroon, South Africa, Ghana, Fiji, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, The United Kingdom, Tonga, Jamaica, Trinidad and Zimbabwe call on the Heads of State of the Commonwealth to reaffirm their commitment to gender equality, safe motherhood, the sexual and reproductive health of men, women and children and health and rights.
We call on you to mobilize additional resources and to remove barriers in our countries so as to improve access to sexual and reproductive health care and policies and HIV/AIDS prevention, counselling, treatment and care services. We emphasize the need to recognize adult literacy as a necessary prerequisite to reproductive health education.
We also express the need for a target to monitor the implementation of RH programmes agreed at the 2005 UN Summit defined as: Reproductive Health for all by 2015.
We also call on you to recognize the special capacity and importance of civil society organizations in this field and to enter into dialogue and partnerships with them.
21 Nov 2005 CPF Workshop