The EU’s commitment to fostering sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in international development and cooperation is not new. This commitment is enforced in different policies and legally binding agreements, such as the EU Consensus for Development, the Samoa Agreement between the EU and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS), various Action Plans such as the Gender Action Plan, Youth Action Plan and Action Plan for Human Rights and Democracy, and, more recently, the Global Health Strategy. Such deep roots in the EU acquis are indicative of how the EU integrates SRHR in different, complementary areas of action. In addition to this political backing, the EU has also made funding commitments in favour of SRHR. With this study, the Countdown 2030 Europe consortium aims to better understand how EU support for SRHR is translated into concrete programmes and activities on the ground.
The analysis allowed to identify the following elements of EU bilateral cooperation in the sub-Saharan, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asian and Neighbourhood regions between 2021 and 2023 :
- Total funding that could potentially go to SRHR, and disaggregation of this total amount by different SRHR components (Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH), the right component or both);
- Main types of funding channels and modalities;
- Alignment between SRHR as a priority in the multiannual indicative programmes (MIPs) and in the Action Documents for EU partner countries;
- Correlation between SRHR funding and relevant policy markers identified by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In addition to the analysis described above, this paper also includes a case study dedicated to the Team Europe Initiative (TEI) on Demography and Social Inclusion in Uganda which relies on key informant interviews. Finally, the report ends with a series of recommendations for the EU and EU delegations spanning from allocating more funding to SRHR to reviewing the quality of support.
Photo: IPPF/Kathleen Prior/Indonesia
