We strive for universal recognition of a woman’s right to choose and access safe abortion.
We believe unsafe abortion is one of the most serious and preventable social justice and public health issues in the world. Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, where abortion is legally restricted in most instances, harmful, clandestine practices have damaging health effects and claim the lives of thousands of women, particularly poor women, each year. Our strategy for combating unsafe abortion involves a comprehensive approach to addressing unwanted pregnancy through our Member Associations in the region.

Promoting Rights
We work with health professionals to confront the stigma and silence surrounding abortion by making sexual and reproductive rights an intrinsic part of all services offered at our Member Associations. Rights related to abortion include a woman’s right to privacy, freedom of thought, liberty, security, and health care. We have partnered with Catholics for a Free Choice to support women facing unintended pregnancies and health providers who must consider the complex moral and ethical issues surrounding abortion on a daily basis.

Increasing Access
We seek to increase access to safe abortion services by advocating for changes in restrictive laws and public policies. Our Member Associations are important public voices articulating the need for safe and legal services, particularly as movements to liberalize abortion laws mobilize legislatures in several countries. Within restrictive contexts, we also increase access by educating health providers and the public about the few circumstances in which abortion is legal, as in cases of rape or when a woman’s health is at risk, as well as advocating for appropriate legal services in these instances. We play a key role in educating policy-makers about the issues surrounding abortion and in advocating for clear policies that effectively allow women to exercise their rights.

Diminishing Need
We remain committed to decreasing the need for abortion by providing sexual and reproductive health services for women, men, and young people, including contraceptive services and comprehensive sexuality education.

We work to ensure that our services are of the highest quality and are accessible to all people, particularly the poor, marginalized, and underserved.

As a service provider committed to guaranteeing sexual and reproductive rights, a significant component of our work focuses on ensuring that all people have access to health services and information of the highest quality. Latin America and the Caribbean is frequently characterized by the highest levels of social inequality in the world. Poor, rural, and indigenous people lack access to the most basic needs, in particular reproductive health services. By providing health services to the most vulnerable populations, including women, we help to improve community wellbeing and contribute to poverty reduction in the region.

Reaching Vulnerable Populations
Geographic, economic, and social barriers, such as long distances to the nearest clinics, high transportation costs, and time spent away from work, are often insurmountable obstacles to accessing health services. In response, many of our Member Associations employ mobile health units to reach isolated, rural, and poor areas. Vehicles ranging from jeeps to boats bring health supplies, information, and services, often for the first time, to areas ranging from indigenous communities in the Bolivian highlands to people displaced by conflict in Colombia.

Ensuring High Quality Services
Quality health care includes the right to benefits from scientific progress and technology. We seek to offer a full range of existing contraceptive choices at our Member Associations, including emergency contraception. As the only means to prevent unwanted pregnancy after sex, emergency contraception offers an important method for everyone, especially survivors of sexual violence and adolescents. IPPF/WHR is committed to expanding access to emergency contraception in the region, including public advocacy at the national and international levels. Our Quality of Care model establishes standards for care at all of our service delivery points.

Recognizing Gender, Rights, and Sexuality
We consider gender equity, human rights, and a positive view of sexuality to be cross-cutting issues that guide all of our efforts. Promoting gender equity ranges from considering the role gender plays in negotiating condom use, to ensuring that women are involved as leaders within the IPPF/WHR community. An important component of our work in gender equity is addressing gender-based violence at our clinics, including screening clients for physical, psychological, and sexual violence, and offering counseling and referrals to services.

Sexual and reproductive rights motivate all of our work; these include the rights to privacy, freedom of thought, information, and the right to choose whether and when to have children, among others. We also support a positive approach to sexuality that goes beyond medical and biological concerns to consider aspects like sexual pleasure and expression, sexual orientation, and sexuality as part of a free and empowered life.

We empower young people by informing them of their sexual and reproductive health and by ensuring their participation in all of our program planning.

We recognize young people have a right to education and health services, and are an asset to our work in advancing human rights. As people under 25 currently represent more than half of the population in Latin America and the Caribbean, IPPF/WHR is acting at a crucial moment to reduce teenage pregnancy and HIV rates, and to help shape young leaders in this influential generation.

Education and Services
Our Member Associations offer health services that consider young people’s particular needs in spaces designed to make them feel welcome and comfortable. Educational programs present a comprehensive vision of sexuality, exploring issues like self-esteem, responsibility, and adolescent rights, in addition to providing essential health information. Peer educators—young people trained by our Member Associations in sexual and reproductive health issues—are often the most effective teachers, engaging youth in their own spaces and language.

Reaching Vulnerable Youth
We bring a particular focus to young people who are marginalized by their societies and whose health needs have been traditionally neglected. For example, GLBTQ (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning) youth often face discrimination and community and family rejection, placing their health and safety at risk. Our Member Associations are increasing their attention to this group, making their information and services relevant and accessible to sexually diverse youth. Additionally, projects specifically targeting young people living and working on the streets are improving access to services through local partnerships for this group facing drug abuse, violence, poverty, and discrimination on a daily basis.

Youth Participation
IPPF believes that youth participation is crucial to the success of any project. Recognizing that we cannot affect or appropriately reach young people without their own input, IPPF/WHR has institutionalized youth participation within our own governance, program design, and management. Youth involvement spans every level of our work, from community outreach projects to our own Board of Directors, where two young people serve as members.

Young people bring creativity, energy, and a fresh perspective to our work. They have been leaders in promoting action in controversial issues in their countries, such as gay rights and youth access to emergency contraception. By including young people at every level of governance and decision making, we are developing active citizens who are informed about the democratic process and will continue to be educated voices in issues that affect their communities.

Our advocacy work seeks to achieve specific changes in policy, laws, and funding to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights for all.

We proudly promote and protect sexual and reproductive health and rights as basic human rights endowed to all people. The unique structure of our Federation enables us to bring the reality of grassroots work to the international arena, and to apply international human rights commitments at the local level. As pioneers in promoting women’s empowerment and family planning, we have a long history of both challenges and triumphs.

Our strategic approach to advocacy aims to promote our agenda within the political decision-making process from local to international levels, including policies and budget commitments. Our recent advocacy efforts have included comprehensive sexuality education in Panama, Chile, and Peru and access to emergency contraception in the Caribbean. We are active participants in movements to liberalize abortion laws in several Latin American countries. Additionally, we promote the inclusion of sexual and reproductive health and rights as essential components of development, health, and education plans, and advocate for ensuring that sufficient resources are destined for sexual and reproductive health services as new governments and administrations take shape across the region.

At the international level, we represent the Federation in monitoring United Nations conferences and activities on issues like population and development, HIV/AIDS, and gender equality and women’s empowerment. As a new Secretary-General leads the push for UN reform, we are also part of a strong collaborative voice ensuring that gender equality is established as a top priority in this process.

Joining Forces for Voice and Accountability

This project is a seven-year advocacy initiative in eleven countries in Latin America and Central Asia/Eastern Europe, and is managed by a consortium led by IPPF/WHR in partnership with the IPPF/European Network (EN).

Click here to read about the project.

United Nations General Assembly Adopts Resolution for New UN Women’s Agency

On Monday, September 14, 2009 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to create a new UN agency for women. This is a landmark victory following significant efforts by the GEAR campaign, a coalition of more than 300 organizations, including the International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region, (IPPF/WHR), to create an independent, women-specific UN agency with adequate stature, resources, operational capacity in the field, and high level leadership to drive the agenda of gender equality. The agency is to be created in early 2010, during the fifteenth anniversary year of the historic UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. “This is great news for the women of the world,” said Carmen Barroso, Regional Director of IPPF/WHR.

Read more.

UN Advances Process on New UN Women's Entity

On Monday, September 15, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a Resolution by consensus which seeks to move Member States forward in establishing a new entity focusing the UN’s work on gender equality and women’s empowerment. This is a major achievement in a three year process that began in 2005 with the World Summit.

Read More.

We promote a comprehensive approach to AIDS, HIV, and sexually transmitted infections (STI). This strategy includes access to prevention, treatment, and care, with an understanding that a synergy among these elements is a vital component in the global fight against AIDS.

While often overlooked within the global perspective, the Latin American and Caribbean region is at a crucial tipping point where prevention efforts and access to AIDS/HIV/STI treatment could determine the future of the epidemic in the region. As providers of sexual health education and services, our Member Associations offer a strategic response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, as well as other sexually transmitted infections.

Prevention, Counseling, and Testing
Across the region, our clinics serve as key access points for raising awareness about HIV, helping people to know their status, and understand how to protect themselves and their partners from infection. Recent data reveals a severe shortage of condoms among Southern nations. For many people in the region condoms are expensive and often not available. For this reason, our prevention strategy focuses on making this important method affordable and accessible for all. Our Member Associations continue to expand voluntary HIV counseling and testing, both in terms of the number of clinic sites that offer testing, as well as the number of clients served.

Confronting Stigma and Discrimination
We recognize that factors such as homophobia, gender discrimination, and misinformation drive the HIV epidemic as much as behaviors that lead to infection.Through community outreach programs and public education campaigns, our Member Associations clarify the myths surrounding HIV and AIDS and encourage people to protect themselves and seek the testing and care they may need.

Integrating HIV within Sexual and Reproductive Health
Historically, funding, research, and programs targeting HIV and AIDS worked separately from other sexual and reproductive health concerns. As major providers of sexual education and health services, particularly for young people and women, our Member Associations offer a major opportunity to respond to HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Addressing other Sexually Transmitted Infections
The urgency of the HIV/AIDS epidemic resulted in a gap in the response to other sexually transmitted infections (STI). Chlamydia, syphilis, and other STIs remain prevalent in Latin America and the Caribbean, causing dangerous health effects ranging from infertility to premature births. We emphasize the need to provide STI testing and treatment services and recognize the link these services provide between sexual and reproductive health and HIV.

Partnerships
Our Member Associations and the Regional Office work in partnership with non-governmental organizations, groups of people living with HIV/AIDS, National AIDS Programs and other agencies and organizations to scale up national and regional responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This includes partnerships at the regional and global levels, including with UNFPA and UNAIDS.

IPPF/WHR’s efforts within the region also include the translation of current HIV/AIDS research and tools into Spanish, expanding access to health resources in Latin America and the Caribbean.