The Canadian Fund for Civil Registration for Latin America and the Caribbean ($20 million initiative over four years) aims to strengthen national registries responsible for civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS), in order to improve the capacity of countries in the region to better respond to the needs of women and children.
By strengthening national CRVS registries, countries will improve the planning and delivery of maternal, newborn and child health related services. For children a legal identity and a birth certificate will help reduce their risk of being exploited, provide access to education and, later in their lives, help them to get jobs and exercise their democratic rights.
Improving CRVS systems across the developing world is critical to ensuring the health of newborns and children, and an important component of the Muskoka Initiative. At the United Nations General Assembly last year, the Prime Minister spoke to the importance of CRVS to achieving our collective MNCH objectives, particularly Millennium Development Goals #4 and #5 – namely, reducing child mortality and improving maternal health. Further discussions in this important area will figure prominently at the upcoming Saving Every Woman, Every Child: Within Arm’s Reach summit, where key partners like UNICEF and the World Bank will be at the table.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is hosting Saving Every Woman, Every Child: Within Arm’s Reach, an international Summit that will shape the future of Child and Maternal Health collaborations in Canada and around the world, from May 28 to 30, 2014, in Toronto.
The Summit will build on Canada’s leadership and chart the way forward for the next phase of coordinated global efforts on maternal, newborn and child health. Summit participants will include Canadian and international experts on maternal, newborn and child health, representing civil society, business, academia, developed and developing countries, international organizations and global foundations.
The Summit will focus on the following three themes:
- Delivering Results for Mothers and Children: Determining how, collectively, we have successfully delivered results and exploring how innovative technology and operating models are saving lives.
- Doing More Together Globally: Pushing new technologies and global partnerships to improve women’s and children’s health.
- Real Action for Women’s and Children’s Health: Identifying concrete steps that Canada and its partners will take to ensure that mortality rates drop, nutrition improves and more children live to see their fifth birthday.
The themes for the Summit were developed in consultation with key Canadian stakeholders.
In June 2010, Canada led G-8 and non G-8 leaders to commit $7.3 billion, mobilizing global action to reduce maternal and infant mortality and improve the health of mothers and children in the world's poorest countries, through the Muskoka Initiative.
As part of the Muskoka Initiative, Canada committed to providing $1.1 billion in new funding between 2010 and 2015 to help women and children in the world’s poorest countries. Canada also announced it would maintain the ongoing spending of $1.75 billion in maternal, newborn and child health programming during the same period, resulting in a total commitment of $2.85 billion.
The Muskoka Initiative succeeded in sparking international attention. In September 2010, during the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Summit, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched Every Woman, Every Child, a global movement mobilizing the resources of governments, international organizations, the private sector and civil society aimed at helping the world meet Millennium Development Goals #4 and #5 – namely, reducing child mortality and improving maternal health.. The goal is to save 16 million lives by 2015.
In September 2013, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, together with Jakaya Kikwete, President of the Republic of Tanzania, co-hosted a UN event entitled Women’s and Children’s Health: The Unfinished Agenda of the Millennium Development Goals. The event, organized in support of the Every Woman, Every Child initiative, examined ways to accelerate progress on improving maternal, newborn and child health and, reducing the number of preventable deaths. President Kikwete will also be in attendance at the Summit in Toronto.
Canada is on track to meeting its Muskoka commitment, with 80 percent of the funding already disbursed. Under the Muskoka Initiative Partnership Program, Canada supported the efforts of 28 Canadian organizations to reduce maternal, newborn, and child mortality over three years in Haiti, Africa and Asia. Bilateral efforts are focused in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Haiti, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Sudan and Tanzania, where maternal and child mortality rates are high; multilateral and global partners include the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the GAVI Alliance, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and the Micronutrient Initiative.
