In advocacy work for the right to safe abortion, movement building and strong national coalitions are central to ensuring coherence in promoting common goals and agreed messages across sectors. Movement building was a central theme at the Campaign’s International Forum –Developing an Advocacy Agenda for Abortion in the 21stCentury and Making Change Happen, 5-7 September 2018. At the end of the meeting, we proposed to provide small grants to a number of Campaign member groups to initiate national coalitions in their countries. In early 2019, we received applications from and provided grants to support national coalition-building meetings in Ecuador, Gabon, The Gambia, Madagascar and Peru. All these meetings shared the overall aim of discussing common strategies and developing opportunities for movement building.
A summary of the Madagascar coalition meeting is below. The full meeting report is availablehere.
Nifin’Akanga organized this workshop on 11-13 March 2019 in Antananarivo. The main aim of the workshop was to create a national coalition for the decriminalization of abortion. There were 24 participants from seven localities in Madagascar. The meeting participants signed a charter for the creation of the “Nifin’akanga Network”, a national network whose mission is the total decriminalization of abortion in Madagascar – not only in cases of rape, incest or at-risk pregnancies. Future priorities and follow-up activities that were agreed included the announcement of the new national network, implementation of the network’s activities, the organization of a meeting with governmental and NGO partners, and better access to data on abortion. Participants were also provided with briefcases with tools to use to start workshops and advocacy activities in their localities.