EWEC Ecosystem
In September 2015, the UN Secretary-General launched the Every Woman Every Child Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health to help further the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Agenda. The strategy builds on 15 years of progress under the Millennium Development Goals and the Every Woman Every Child (EWEC) movement. A key strategic priority for EWEC is to ensure strong implementation of the SDGs.
To this end, the UN Secretary-General appointed the Every Woman Every Child’s Independent Accountability Panel (IAP). IAP’s vision is to provide an independent and transparent review of progress on the implementation of the Global Strategy and to identify and advocate the necessary actions to accelerate achievement of its goals from the accountability perspective, using as a starting point, the Strategy’s Indicator and Monitoring Framework.
The IAP Accountability Framework
The IAP’s niche lies in its role in assessing and strengthening accountability for critical issues of health and related rights, through its reports and recommendations, and by showcasing emerging practice as well as identifying key areas in need of improvement:
- What meaningful accountability mechanisms are being developed, with whom, for whom and on what?
- Who is being left behind, why and by whom?
- What are the critical accountability gaps in need of redress, intensified policy attention and investments?
- What course can be taken to improve institutional and collective accountabilities?
The IAP conceptual framework is to monitor, review, act and remedy. Remedy is about going beyond data monitoring and review processes, to encouraging action that can tackle underlying causes, generate deeper transformations and prevent recurrences when rights to health have been neglected or violated.
IAP is deeply committed to uncovering the root causes and to find solutions for the reduction of maternal and child deaths, so that we can meet the ambitious targets set by the new Global Strategy. IAP is committed to support the strengthening of national and sub-national accountability mechanisms and will rely upon their work to develop insights and recommendations.
Hosting and Governance Structure
The IAP Secretariat is hosted by the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH) administratively. This provides the IAP a connection to the 1000+ partners and thousands of individuals linked to PMNCH, encouraging a truly multi-stakeholder approach to accountability. PMNCH itself is hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO). As presented in Figure 1, administrative arrangements allow for a degree of separation from the WHO UHC and Life Course Division in which PMNCH and IAP Secretariat respectively are housed.
The IAP has a small standalone Secretariat which is supporting effective and efficient functioning of the IAP to deliver on its mandate.
Figure 1: IAP governance structure
Legal Status of the IAP
The IAP is administratively and legally a project within the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH), within the World Health Organization.
You may contact the IAP at: info@iapewec.org