“Building strong and inclusive partnerships for maternal, newborn, child health, and family planning programs is not future work,” said Dr. Koki Agarwal, Director of USAID’s MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership at a recent Wilson Center event. “It’s urgent and it’s ‘right now’ work.”

This exploration of country perspectives and expertise on improving maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health and family planning programs was the third event in a series that placed regional experiences and voices in the foreground.

Is a “green resource curse” on its way? Kimberly Thompson, a Senior Advisor for Natural Resources and Conflict and the Industry Lead for Mining at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), says that the current status quo in the green mining industry risks “inadvertently creating the conditions” for it to happen.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is sending shockwaves through global systems for natural resources like food, oil and natural gas, and critical minerals. But a recent Wilson Center event assessing the fallout of the conflict also looked to the deeper implications and lessons from the crisis.

In recent years, Mexican women have experienced a significant downgrade in the quality and accessibility of public healthcare – and not due to the COVID-19 pandemic – said Irene Tello, Executive Director of Mexican impunity watchdog Impunidad Cero, at a recent event hosted by the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute. The expert panel agreed that the greatest barriers for Mexican women seeking medical attention lie in the current government’s nearsighted health policies and mismanagement of the public health sector.

“I want this war to be over. I want all of us to rebuild our societies. We are a force that can do that, and we will do that; we are doing it. But I think we also need to see the bigger picture, that women in the world, and now in our region, are not protected from violence – any form of violence,” said Marina Pisklakova-Parker, Director of Strategic Partnerships at the Every Woman Treaty, during a recent Wilson Center event on Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian women’s voices in the anti-war movement. 

The humanitarian needs for those who are displaced are unprecedented, said Amb. Mark Green, President of the Wilson Center and former USAID Administrator, at a Doha Forum panel hosted by the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program.

Evidence shows that in low- and middle-income countries, the expansion of health coverage or access to care has not always reduced overall mortality, said Dr. Patricia Jodrey, Child Health Team Lead in the Office of Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). “However, the analysis also showed that when countries have progressed in improving the quality of their health systems, the survival rate tends to improve,” she said.

“The current pandemic is straining human resources, disrupting supply chains and service delivery, and negatively impacting service seeking among women and girls in countries across the globe,” said Sarah Barnes, Project Director of the Wilson Center’s Maternal Health Initiative. She spoke at a recent event, co-hosted by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), on unintended pregnancies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The increasing rates of unintended pregnancies during the pandemic have exacerbated the vulnerabilities of many women, said Anneka Knutsson, Chief of the Sexual and Reproductive Health Branch at UNFPA.