First Lady chairs three high level international events

The First Lady and President of the Organisation of African First Ladies Against HIV/AIDS (OAFLA), Mrs Lordina Mahama participated in three high level international events in the country this week geared towards the development of women and their sexual reproductive health and rights.

In all 14 African First Ladies, including four representatives, the UN Under-Secretary-General of UNICEF, executive directors from UNAIDS and the AU participated in all the programmes which attracted over 800 participants.

The first programme which was launched by the President John Dramani Mahama was the 7th African Conference on Sexual Health and Rights which was organised under the auspices of  Curious Minds, Ghana, an organisation of young advocates and youth in broadcasting.

The second was a dinner held to launch Ghana’s Ending Child Marriage Campaign which was organised by the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection.

The objectives of the initiative was to share the government of Ghana’s agenda on ending the practice with stakeholders and the general public.

 Child Marriage remains a reality for millions of children, predominantly girls across the world. Globally, more than 700 million women living today were married before their 18th birthday.

Africa has the second highest rates of child marriage in the world after South Asia and given the enormity of the problem, global momentum to address child marriage is increasingly being built with the African Union launching a two year continental campaign to end child marriage in Africa in 2014 and this has been extended to 2018.

  The final programme in which the First Lady was involved was the official launch of the Global “All-In” Adolescent HIV Campaign which forms part of the global push to end the AIDS epidermic by 2030 and aims at reducing AIDS-related deaths and new HIV infections among adolescents by 65 per cent and 75 per cent respectively.