The Communication Initiative
Development action with informed and engaged societies
The Communication Initiative

After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. 

Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future. 

On the transfer, co-founder Victoria Martin expressed her pleasure to see this work continue under Wits' leadership, knowing that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction. 

As Wits, we honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades and look forward building from that strong base. This includes co-founders Warren Feek (1953-2024) and Victoria Martin as well as La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA), which continues independently at lainiciativadecomunicacion.com with links to The CI Global site. We are also eager to forge new partnerships and entertain new ideas as we consider how best to contribute to social and behaviour change in our rapidly evolving environment.

If you are joining the International Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) Summit in Panama, please join Wits and CILA on Monday, 22 June, to share your thoughts and suggestion for the relaunch of the Communication Initiative. We will be in Pacifica 5 from 12-1:25 for the Refuel, Reflect, and Renew Lunch Series: The Communication Initiative: celebrating a driving force for Communication for Social Change and the way forward. We will reflect on the legacy of Warren Feek and family in creating the Communication Initiative, consider the contributions of CI over the years and then turn our attention towards the future in this dynamic session. 

If you are unable to join us in Panama, we still want to hear from you. Please contribute your thoughts by following this link: https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026 or reaching out to ci_surveys@commint.com. 

You can also follow the QR Code:

 https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026

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Sexual and reproductive health and rights and SDGs

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Author: Ranjani K. Murthy, May 25 2017 - Sexual and reproductive health refers to a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease, in all matters relating to the sexuality and reproductive system/ processes. Reproductive and sexual rights pertain to right to make informed decisions concerning reproduction, relations/marriage and sexuality free of discrimination, coercion and violence.  

 

A review of SDGs suggests that targets on universal access to SRHR (within SDG 3 and SDG 5), eliminating violence against women and girls in public and private spheres,  eliminate harmful practices such as early and forced marriages,  reducing maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births (SDG 3) and achieving internationally agreed targets to address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women (SDG 2) have been included. 

 

The indicators pertaining to SRHR in SDGs are more comprehensive than MDGs and cover prevalence of  violence against women and girls in public and private domain, percentage of women and girls subject to harmful practices, adolescent birth rate, access to family planning, antenatal, safe delivery and post natal care, proportion of women reporting making decisions on sexual and reproductive health, percentage of pregnant women reporting access to social protection floors,  HIV prevalence and new infection rates across sex and percentage of population with access to basic needs like water and sanitation.

 

Yet controversial issues like access to safe abortion services, usage of health services to eliminate female fetus, and inadequate sexual and reproductive health services for single women and transwomen are  not included. Neither are expensive issues like access to cancer screening or treatment for reproductive cancer. Further, the effect of new kinds of employment (night shifts in Business Process Outsourcing centers) on sexual and reproductive health & rights is also ignored.  Land/resource-grab by state-corporate interests and its implications for sexual and reproductive health and rights is not recognized, like violence against protesting women affecting their SRHR, loss of medicinal herbs which women use  for sexual and reproductive health and exploitation of women who have slipped into poverty with land/resource loss. At times race, caste, class, abilities, sexual orientation and gender identity, etc., affect different women in different ways.  Finally affordability of sexual and reproductive health care in the era of privatisation is an issue within which SDGs have to be looked at.  Some of the private health insurance companies do not cover delivery or access to safe abortion. 

 

As with all of the blogs posted on our website, the content above does not imply the endorsement of The CI or its Partners and is from the perspective of the writer alone. We do not check facts and strive to retain the writer's voice, as is detailed in our Editorial Policy.