Asia Safe Abortion Partnership (ASAP)

Background Every day more than 100 such women--many of them young girls just beginning their lives--die as a result. Tens of thousands more suffer life-long disabilities. Every day thousands of Asian women driven by desperation, poverty and social stigma seek help from unskilled providers, or quacks, to end unplanned pregnancies. In Asia, unsafe abortion accounts for 12 percent of all maternal deaths. 38,000 women each year.

At present there are only 3 options to prevent an unwanted pregnancy Abstinence Contraception Abortion

Medical abortion using a combination of mifepristone and misoprostol, or misoprostol alone has the potential to meet the needs of millions of women for a safe and affordable way to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Professionals also sometimes lack the knowledge about how to use them and thus medical abortion is not accessible to the vast majority of women throughout the world who could benefit from it.

Organizational history In March 2008, 37 participants from 13 countries met in Kuala Lumpur and formed the Asia Safe Abortion Partnership (ASAP), facilitated by ICMA. This network has members from Turkey, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mongolia, India, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Cambodia. At present there is no such group in Asia and we hope to create south-south capacity building, and be in a position to influence regional / global agenda by the credibility of our work. ASAP will be a useful forum for experience sharing and capacity building. Individual members are already doing this but their effectiveness will be improved by being a part of such a group. of the region

Goal To promote, protect and advance women’s sexual and reproductive rights and health in Asia by reducing unsafe abortion and its complications and where it is legal, by promoting access to comprehensive safe abortion services.

OBJECTIVES To serve as a forum for information and experience sharing, strategic thinking and planning for a collective vision aimed towards regional and international advocacy To support members to advance the partnership goal in their country contexts through the following areas: law, advocacy and policy capacity building research and documentation service delivery To promote new technologies, including manual vacuum aspiration and medical abortion.

Membership Members of the partnership will be organizations and individuals that agree with the goal and objectives of the partnership and are, or intend to be, active in promoting or supporting access to comprehensive safe abortion services, including medical abortion. Currently we have 70 members from 14 different countries of Asia.

Governance bodies The Steering Committee will be responsible for: • determining the strategies and priority activities of the Consortium; • overseeing work of the secretariat and other groups to ensure that the objectives and priority activities are implemented; • ensuring review of, and approving, materials developed for dissemination; • the establishment and membership of the Working Groups; • determining attendance at conferences and other meetings on behalf of the Consortium; and • ensuring that funding is obtained to undertake the Consortium’s activities.

The Steering Committee will consist of not more than 7 persons nominated/ selected in their individual capacities. These persons will serve for a term of two years beginning from 19th March 2008. We have now decided to extend this to 2 terms for the first Team so that sustainability strategies can be worked out. So 2 new members will be added at the end of two years for an over lap and then 24 will rotate off every 2 years. An appropriate gender balance will be ensured. The composition should strive for an equal geographic distribution across parts of Asia. The members thus nominated should be willing to participate regularly at meetings and commit the time required to support the work of the Secretariat and the working groups between meetings.

Functioning Chair The Steering Committee will nominate a Chair to liaise closely with the Secretariat and the Coordinator, as well as to be co- signatory to official documents and correspondence of the ASAP. Procedures The Steering Committee will: • meet twice a year; • require a quorum of a simple majority to hold a meeting; • make decisions by consensus but where that is not possible by a simple majority vote; • require a quorum of two/thirds of the Steering Committee to hold a meeting to consider a major policy change; • modify major policy decisions, i.e., changing the terms of reference; changing the objectives or membership criteria; and any other governance issue, by a two/thirds majority of the whole Steering Committee, absent members may be consulted by telephone.

Coordinator The Coordinator will, under the supervision of the Steering Committee, be directly responsible for: • implementing the policies of the Steering Committee and coordinating the implementation of agreed activities on behalf of the Steering Committee; • all administrative and logistic arrangements for meetings of the constituent bodies of the Partnership • the financial management of, and support fundraising for, the Partnership.

The Coordinator will • act as a liaison between Consortium members; • facilitate and provide assistance to the working groups. • provide support, information and secretariat for the meetings of the Consortium; • identify and recruit consultants as necessary for conducting the work of the Secretariat and the activities of the partnership • develop mailing lists and be responsible for dissemination of Partnership materials; and • develop the Partnership website.

Working plan Law, policy, advocacy Research and Documentation Strategic Mapping and pooling of existing resources Advocacy opportunitiues, other initiatives, allies and enemies to be identified Core advocacy messages developed. Template to be developed which members from each country can fillInformation received from members. Research and Documentation Mapping of research ( clinical and social science) Website with country profiles- technology available, research capacity, stakeholders, cost component) Sharing data collection tools and resarch instruments Aim to get together researchers to identify gaps and future directions (2009 APCRSH) Disemination of research with partners on a regular basis (website, e group)

Service Delivery Dissemination of standard regimen Disseminate – distribute training materials to the members Profile the list of pharma companies Gather – share IEC material Share M&E tools eg logo for illiterate women from Nepal Exchange training prog for service delivery QOC component Training needs assessment Collation of training curriculum , tools Orientation and follow up in -depth training- technical skills, contraception,counselling,gender and rights,advocacy,value clarification.

Fundraising strategy Currently fund raising is being done through ICMA Small grant applications for projects have been made but no success so far. Planning a funding strategy during the next SC meeting

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