International efforts to assure reproductive health and rights conflict with cultural realities in the Philippines, Latvia, Japan, and India.
Holding Our Ground focuses on one of the most contested of the agreements hammered out in Cairo: reproductive rights. The right of both women and men to decide freely if and when to get married, and if, when and how often to have children, was enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights over 50 years ago. But 10 years after the Cairo agreement, it's still far from universally acknowledged. The program features reports from: the Philippines, now at the epicenter of the battle over efforts to restrict information on, and access to, family planning; Latvia, where taboos surrounding the subject of sex still hamper efforts to provide information for adolescents; Japan, where the falling birthrate is focusing attention again on the problems of childcare for working women; and finally India, where-despite laws designed to protect the girl child-the practice of female infanticide, and its horrendous repercussions, appears to be growing. Thoraya Obaid, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund, describes why reproductive health and rights are critical for development worldwide.
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