Strengthening Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights through Midwifes

The project aims to reduce maternal mortality and increase sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for women and adolescent girls between the ages of 14 and 49 in Somalia. More specifically the project works to improve the availability and accessibility of professionally trained and certified midwives who are able to provide quality rights-based SRHR services to these women and adolescent girls. The project also addresses underlying barriers to women's and adolescent girls’ demand for and use of midwifery services by increasing awareness at community level about midwifery and SRHR. Project activities include: (1) strengthening the capacity of midwifery schools and providing them with essential equipment to train midwives from international standards; (2) updating the national midwifery curriculum to include modules and practice on family planning women’s rights and SRHR as well as female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM/C) child early and forced marriage (CEFM) and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) prevention; (3) upgrading the skills of midwifery tutors to improve the quality of training in alignment with the updated curriculum; (4) strengthening midwifery associations and traditional birth attendants in empowering women and adolescent girls and in providing rights-based SRHR information to communities including FGM/C CEFM SGBV prevention and referral; and (5) providing training to girls’ and boys’ clubs in schools on SRHR in order to increase demand for services and to identify and refer marginalized adolescent girls and girls to midwifery services. The project expects that the skills of approximately 500 new midwives 375 in-service midwives and 150 tutors across 15 midwifery schools are upgraded across the country and more than 288 000 pregnant women between the ages of 14 and 49 are reached. Indirectly the midwives’ and the community outreach aim to benefit 5 761 080 people including 806 550 adolescent girls and 1 920 359 men and b

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) improved availability and accessibility of professionally trained and certified midwives who are able to provide quality rights-based SRHR services to women and adolescent girls between the ages of 14 and 49 in Somalia; and (2) increased use of skilled midwives and reproductive health services by women and adolescent girls between the ages of 14 and 49 in Somalia.