International Women's Health Coalition
| Abbreviation | IWHC |
|---|---|
| Predecessor | National Women's Health Coalition |
| Formation | June 1, 1984 |
| Founder | Joan Dunlop and Adrienne Germain |
| Type | Non-governmental organization |
| Location |
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| Website | https://iwhc.org |
The International Women's Health Coalition (IWHC) is a non governmental organization (NGO) founded in 1984 based in New York City. The IWHC focuses on issues relating to women and girls' human rights, health and equality. IWHC represents part of the women's movement that recognizes that many challenges to gender equality lie in challenges in health issues and in raising families. The IWHC is one of the oldest currently active global feminist groups.
Joan Dunlop was the first president of IWHC and served from 1984 to 1998. Dunlop took over the National Women's Health Coalition (NWHC) created by Merle Goldberg and changed its mission to become more international in scope. The original NWHC was small, with a staff of three, and funded abortion training and other health services projects in various countries.Adrienne Germain was also involved in co-founding IWHC with Dunlop. Germain became vice president of IWHC in 1985. Germain and Dunlop created a unique approach to women's health initiatives by investing in "local women-led organisations that provide services and influence national policies, and, simultaneously, advocating for global policy and funding.
IWHC attended the 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo where they asked for the inclusion for access to contraception, safe abortion, maternity care, better access to women's health services and comprehensive sex education. In preparation for the conference, Dunlop and 15 colleagues developed a set of guidelines called "Women's Declaration on Population Policies," which focused on women's rights in family planning. The "Women's Declaration" was eventually reviewed and finalized with the help of 100 different women's organizations around the world. The "Women's Declaration" was adopted by the conference in Cairo. One of the main goals of the "Women's Declaration" was to "shift the focus of population programs from goals and targets" to considering the whole of a woman's life. Dunlop with the IWHC argued that working towards gender equality in addition to sex education would help reduce birth rates. Demographic goals and targets, conversely, led to programs that included forced or unwanted sterilizations and "inappropriate methods of family planning" for women. Dunlop also called demographic and target methods to population control "basically racist" because she felt there was a subtext that "those black and brown people should not have more children."
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