A planning workshop was held in Bangkok to discuss the the next phase of DAWN’s contribution to advancing the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) agenda: the EQA (Equality, Quality and Accountability) Project. Following on from the twentieth year reviews of ICPD and Beijing, and the Post 2015 Development Agenda, DAWN hopes to chart a fresh course to focus on instigating and promoting changes at the policy level and programmatically on the ground.

This project will focus on the three largest Asian countries – China, India and Indonesia. These are countries of great size and diversity so a multiplicity of issues and challenges can be addressed. The differences by region, age, ethnicity, religion, and other features, as well as significant variations in legal and policy-making processes, provide rich variation for the study of challenges and advances. We hope to use this research to provide insights for a study of other countries and regions in a later phase.

The workshop defined the Project details and the status of SRHR in each country, specific services and rights to be focused on, and challenges that may come up, as well as a draft time frame.