Women's conference tackles mortality rates and girl's education

Prominent women leaders from around the world gathered in a three-day conference at the Dead Sea in Jordan earlier this week for the launch of a Global Women's Action Network to combat newborn mortality and to ensure that girls everywhere have access to education. "The Global Women's Action Network for Children was launched to tackle some of humanity's oldest tragedies: the needless deaths of millions of mothers and babies every year and the wasted potential of tens of millions of girls who are kept out of school," said Queen Rania of Jordan, who patronised the conference. The event, titled 'Mobilizing for Action', was co-hosted by the Jordanian National Centre for Family Affairs (NCFA) and the US-based NGO Children's Defence Fund (CDF). According to NCFA figures, maternal mortality rates in Jordan average around 41 per 100,000 live births, twice Western European rates, as a result of health carelessness on the part of pregnant women. The Action Network initiative was founded in February 2004 by 35 women from around the globe who are motivated by a vision of a just and equitable world in which the needs and rights of women and children are met and assured. According to the organisers of the conference, every minute somewhere in the world a mother dies during pregnancy or childbirth, every hour 450 newborn babies die, and every three seconds a child under five dies. "Added together, that is more than 11 million women and children dying each year from mostly preventable causes," said Marian Wright Edelman, President of the CDF, who rejected the argument that this high number of fatalities was the result of acts of God. "More than 100 million children across the globe do not attend school. The majority of them are girls. These are our human choices. They can and must be changed and it is women who must lead the way." Participants also agreed to establish an innovation fund that would allocate finance and resources to support women's and children's programmes around the world where such services are lacking but strongly needed. Other participants included former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former President of Ireland and UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams. MF/SZ/AD