Gender inequality and harmful gender norms remain widespread in the EU. While sexual and reproductive health and rights are at the core of gender equality and women’s rights and empowerment, their attainment varies greatly from country to country. Women and girls, particularly those marginalised by systemic oppression, face significant barriers to sexual and reproductive healthcare, information and education, which violates their human rights and hinders progress towards gender equality.

Discourse from anti-rights movements continues to undermine the significant progress achieved in safeguarding SRHR and threatens many of the rights and values that the EU aims to protect. It is in this context that IPPF EN, together with its Member Associations (MAs) and partners, is working to progress towards a more gender equal world where people in all their diversity are released from harmful gender norms and fully empowered to make decisions over their lives and bodies. 

We are working to strengthen support in the EU institutions and Member States for gender equality and women’s rights by:

• Ensuring that policy and decision makers at all levels (EU, national and local) are creating progressive legislative and policy frameworks that protect and advance gender equality and women’s rights, including SRHR, within the EU;
• Educating and empowering young people - as a new generation of EU citizens - to become leaders and drivers of the long-term change process, rooted in societal norms and behaviours, that advances gender equality, eliminates harmful stereotypes and intersectional discrimination, and prevents SGBV;
• Increasing engagement and capacity of civil society actors to act in a strategic and coordinated manner when promoting gender equality and women’s rights; and
• Strengthening the technical and organisational capacity of our MAs and partners to design, implement and sustain intersectional, gender transformative initiatives. 

2023 MAIN ACHIEVEMENTS

In 2023, under the CERV programme, we collaborated with 24 EU-based IPPF MAs and collaborative partners (CPs). Our achievements in 2023 include:

• Supporting civil society movements by creating spaces for our MAs, CPs and other stakeholders to exchange expertise, learn from each other's experiences, engage in closer dialogue, build stronger partnerships, engage in advocacy activities and strategize more effectively and proactively against anti-rights movements. A major highlight was a four-day long programme of learning, sharing and strategizing events, organised in October in Sofia, Bulgaria. The “Power of the Many Forum” hosted over 150 SRHR activists and advocates from over 30 countries across Europe and Central Asia and included representatives from SRHR organisations, activists driving change in hostile environments, youth volunteers and community representatives bringing their expertise and lived experiences. You can download the Forum report below. 
• Enhancing our network's strategic communications capacity, focusing on value-based framing, new narratives, research and campaigning to tackle the growing anti-gender movement. We also continued to support and stand in solidarity with brave activists, social movements and MAs championing and defending SRHR and gender equality against backlash in their national contexts, using our voice and platform to centre communities that face systemic and intersecting forms of discrimination.
• Continuing to drive European leadership to advance SRHR and gender equality, working with our MAs, partners and young people to champion progressive regional policies and legislation. Our external engagement helped to achieve 17 policy wins at the EU level, while our MAs and CPs achieved more than 40 wins in EU countries. Our top policy priority was supporting adoption of the landmark EU Directive to combat Violence Against Women, through direct advocacy and external communications. 
• Continuing to equip young people with vital life skills and keep them safe from gender-based harms by further expanding the reach of a vital tool developed by IPPF EN’s young volunteers to ensure that sexuality and relationships education (SRE) tackles the root causes of gender inequality and supports prevention of SGBV, while advancing with a flagship IPPF EN initiative to contribute new evidence on how SRE can help to prevent violence. Meanwhile, in 2023, our EU-based MAs and CPs reached a total of 92,461 young people with complete CSE through their direct efforts, and this number rises to 638,679 young people with the inclusion of data from the Netherlands and Germany, where sexuality education is mandatory for young people. These combined figures reflect an approximate 23% increase in the proportion of young people MAs and CPs have managed to reach with comprehensive sexuality education compared to the previous year.

You can read our Annual Report 2023 here.