Canada’s feminist foreign aid agenda

Canada’s feminist foreign aid agenda
The Lancet
Published: 15 July 2017
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)31860-3

Since his election in November, 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Government has promised forward-looking health policies. Canada has always been seen as a global citizen in health, international affairs, and foreign aid, but under Stephen Harper’s Conservative Government (2006–15), credibility was questioned as he tilted Canada’s development programme for health and overseas aid priorities to align with trade goals, and his flagship Muskoka Initiative for maternal and child health ignored women’s reproductive health rights.

The announcement on June 9 of a CAN$5 billion annual aid plan for the next 5 years, directed at women’s organisations in the Global South, has now been welcomed as a feminist foreign aid strategy. 95% of Canadian foreign aid will now be committed to criteria specific to women, with the goal of empowering and improving the health and wellbeing of girls and women and their children.

Continued at source: The Lancet: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)31860-3/fulltext