News
15 October 2007
Liya Receives Honorary Orphan Ranger Award
At the 10th Anniversary Benefit Gala of the
Worldwide Orphans (WWO) organization hosted by Katie Couric, anchor and
managing editor for CBS Evening news. Actress Mary-Louise Parker, star of
TV's Weeds presented an Honorary Orphan Ranger award to Liya Kebede for
her work and dedication in improving the health and well-being of mothers
and children across the globe . While Cynthia McFadden, co-anchor of ABC
News "Nightline" and "Primetime," presented an Honorary Orphan Ranger award
to Silda Wall Spitzer, the first lady of New York State and founder of
Children for Children. The gala raised $1.4 Million in support of orphans
worldwide--to transform their lives by taking them out of anonymity and
helping them to become healthy, independent and productive members of their
communities.
In accepting this honor, Liya highlighted her foundation's global efforts to
assist mothers and children in deprived and very vulnerable settings.
Quote "It is heart breaking to see children growing up in orphanages
because they have lost their parents. It is one thing when their mothers are
dying from diseases that we have no cure for but it is completely
unacceptable when children lose their mothers to causes that are treatable
or preventable. In a world where giving life is the most wonderful thing a
mother can experience,in the poorest countries it is one of the major causes
of death for a woman. We at the Liya Kebede Foundation, in partnership with
the WHO fight to narrow this gap by helping to keep these mothers alive."
Patrons and friends of Worldwide Orphans Foundation (WWO) filled the
ballroom at Cipriani Wall Street as WWO celebrated a decade of dedication to
orphaned children. As Honorary Orphan Ranger -
The audience was thrilled by songs by Tony-award winning first ladies of
Broadway, Christine Ebersole and Donna Murphy, and Laura Osnes and Max
Crumm, the stars of Grease.
26 September 2007
LIYA FEATURED ON AL JAZEERA'S PROGRAM RIZ KHAN
Liya talks about her foundation, how it was started and the issues surrounding maternal, newborn and childhood mortality. http://english.aljazeera.net/
9 October 2007
LIYA INVITED TO SPKEAK AT NATIONAL PRESS CLUB
Liya was invited to attend and give a
speech at the National Press Club on the subject of child marriage at the
launch of the PBS Now's documentary special entitled Child Brides.
She thanked the Nike Foundation and PBS,co-hosts of the gathering, for
helping to bring to light an important
and deeply neglected issue.
"While many countries have national laws and have signed international
agreements forbidding early marriage, girls under the age of 18
continue to marry throughout the developing world, as gender roles,
traditional marriage systems, and poverty dictate the practice," she
said.
Liya congratulated the Nike Foundation and PBS for partnering
together with other organizations, NGO's and civil society groups to
engage in public advocacy to improve the health, security, and
well-being of adolescent girls in developing countries and encouraged their
efforts to campaign for an end to the centuries-old practice of child
marriage.
"It is still shocking for me to hear that in today's world, pregnancy
and childbirth remain one of the leading causes of death for young girls
and women. Add to this burden that in most developing countries, girls
get married at the ripe age of 10, 11 or 12 and their first sexual
experience ends up leaving them with a pregnancy that they are not
ready for. Couple this with the lack of education they receive on
protection to prevent HIV and other such illnesses.These poor girls
are left isolated with no coping mechanisms for survival once they are
pregnant. They don't have anybody to talk to that can help or educate
them."
Recent statistics from the World Health Organization and other
agencies indicate that every minute-- one woman dies from pregnancy
and childbirth complications and other pregnancy-related illnesses.
Child brides typically experience high rates of childbirth
complications, HIV infection and partner violence. Some children as young as
three are married in India. Child marriage also
traps families in a cycle of poverty.
Maria Hinojosa, Senior Correspondent for PBS's NOW programme,
who made the journey to different countries and shot the hour long
documentary on Child Brides that aired on PBS this October said
"Child marriage is a global issue affecting millions of
girls and women, yet one few people are talking about."
Liya concluded her presentation by emphasizing this urgent call to
action. "We have to stand up against child marriage. If these young
girls hadn't married at ages as young as ten, twelve and thirteen, and
were allowed to thrive and continue their schooling, then imagine what
their lives could have been like today."
26 September 2007
Deliver Now! Saving 77 Million BY 2015
Hundreds gathered in Bryant Park to mark the launch of the Deliver Now for Women and Children global campaign to combat maternal and child deaths worldwide. To support these efforts, Liya joined talk show host Ricki Lake, the First Lady of the Republic of Zambia and multi Grammy-winning artist Chaka Khan in a rally and call to action. Leading partners in the campaign including the Clinton Foundation, The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, The World Health Organization, UNFPA and governments like Norway, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have pledged their commitment to put an end to the 10 million deaths of mothers and children each year.
In her role as WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, Liya implored the crowd to support the global promise to deliver now and to become strong advocates for change.
“ I feel a tremendous sense of responsibility as a New Yorker and as an Ethiopian woman. I was lucky to be pregnant in New York where I received dozens of ultrasounds with the latest technology. But in my native land, 1 in 14 women will die giving birth.”
The shocking statistics underscored in the campaign point to a lack of resources and basic health needs not being met in many parts of the world, in particular eastern and sub-Saharan Africa where a pregnant woman has the highest risk in the world of dying during child birth. Liya stressed the importance of early obstetric care to prevent these deaths in her country and around the world.
“The overwhelming majority of these deaths can be prevented with greater access to basic health resources,” she said.
Deliver Now is a major new advocacy drive and global alliance of more than 170 partners to eliminate maternal and child deaths and improve health around the world.
Every minute of every day, a woman dies needlessly during pregnancy or childbirth. Every three seconds a child under five dies. Four million newborns die in their first four weeks of life, 3 million of those in the first week. And with 42 percent of pregnant women around the world experiencing a complication, up to 15 percent of which are life-threatening, protecting the lives of women and children during pregnancy, childbirth and beyond is one of the most critical goals facing the world today.
Most of these deaths can be prevented through greater political commitment, improved health care and increased investment. At least US$9 billion a year is needed to meet the basic health care needs of women and children. As of 2004, only US$2 billion - less than a quarter of what is needed - was available to support such services in developing countries.
As a leading member of the Deliver Now campaign, the Liya Kebede Foundation will play a key role in promoting the new "Global Campaign for the Health Millennium Development Goals " (highlighting the goals 4,5 and 6), unveiled September 26, 2007, by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of Norway at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City. The launch of Deliver Now also follows the recent creation of the International Health Partnership in London by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other world leaders.
The Deliver Now campaign launched in New York on September 26 amidst rallies in Manhattan and the Bronx and awareness-raising events across the city built popular support for the drive throughout the week. This will be followed by other global events, such as the high-profile conference Women Deliver in London October 18-20 (www.womendeliver.org), and the roll out of intensive local programs in individual countries, beginning in 2008 in India and Tanzania.
9 June 2007
Liya Featured on CNN's Revealed
Last week, CNN featured Liya Kebede on it's show Revealed. Please visit: http://edition.cnn.com/CNNI/Programs/revealed/kebede/ to find out more about Liya, her career, her work and her activism.
01 May 2007
Liya RECEIVES SMART COOKIE AWARD
Cookie magazine presented Liya Kebede with their Smart Cookie Award hosted
by Deborah Roberts ,in New York City on April 30th to recognize,
celebrate, and support her work as a mom who is working to make the world a
better place.
Other notable moms who also received this special award that night were
Sharon Stone , Cynthia Nixon Mariska Hargitay, Maria Otero, Marcia Gay
Harden, Karen Guenther, Wendy Lethin, and Sondria Saylor, Leigh Blake, Heidi
Breeze-Harris
To learn more about the Smart Cookie Awards visit www.cookiemag.com.
15 March 2007
The Meeting of Women Parliamentarians
The Meeting of Women Parliamentarians in London on 13-14 March 2007, organized by WHO’s Department of Making Pregnancy Safer (MPS) and Sally Keeble, Member of United Kingdom Parliament, aimed at exploring better ways to work with countries to identify cost-effective, implementable solutions, that are in keeping with a continuum of care approach, to maternal and newborn health challenges.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and Parliamentarians from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (United Kingdom) organized the experience-sharing meeting between parliamentarians from north and south to promote investments and methods that can improve progress on maternal and newborn health and survival. Parliamentarians from the United Kingdom kindly agreed to co-organize the meeting which enabled key women parliamentarians from developed and developing countries to review and discuss how progress can be made. The meeting also served as a platform from which the case could be made for increased development assistance for improvements on maternal and newborn health and survival.
The central goal was to urge parliamentarians and government health officials to continue to raise the issue of women’s health care needs to the highest levels and to commit to providing budgetary allocations and development assistance to meet these needs.
Other incentives included focusing on how to further develop a network for continued discussion and support by pulling together existing initiatives and commitments and knowledge sharing on new and innovative ways of working together.
Ms Liya Kebede, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, thanked MP Sally Keeble and the Department of Making Pregnancy Safer at the
World Health Organization for inviting her to take part in the very special gathering of women parliamentarians. Ms Kebede recognized that some have joined from countries as distant as Tajikistan,Cambodia and Tanzania-and thanked them for taking the time to travel so far and support this global mother’s day plan of action. She highlighted that parliamentarians are the people who have a direct impact on governments--and can help move forward the necessary policy changes to dramatically improve maternal and newborn health in their country.
Currently only half of the developed countries have agreed upon 0.7 % of their GDP on assistance. The Global Plan of Action brings together policy-makers and civil society leaders to redouble efforts and strengthen the health system in countries where investment in maternal, newborn and child health is drastically low. The call to action being signed at the Meeting by Members of Parliament from all over the world asks donor countries to revitalize efforts to reduce the global burden—of maternal and newborn ill-health, especially among the poor. “We don’t need new solutions to ease the costs of ill-health to women, their babies, households and communities.”
Ms Kebede went on to add that her role as the WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health has enabled her to travel around the world and see how essential these changes are in order to promote the well-being of the family, the community, the country. As a mother of two and a native of Ethiopia, she is closely aware of the challenges a mother faces birthing and raising children in a climate of poverty, undernourishment and political and economic instability.
To show her support for mothers and children, Ms Kebede discussed the launch of the World Health Organization’s global campaign: Make Your Mother’s Day, Every Day. The campaign celebrates the importance
of healthy Mothers.
In the last decade, over 7 million women have died from complications during pregnancy and childbirth and millions more suffer short and long term disabilities. And close to half a million children die from preventable causes in her country of Ethiopia each year and nearly 6 million under fives die annually in Africa.
She summed up by stating that ensuring skilled care at every birth, the World Health Organization has invested in human resources for health, will promoted better family planning, and given greater access to skilled care during pregnancy and childbirth, to aid in the prevention and management of maternal complications and death.
NEWS ARCHIVE
2007
Liya Receives Honorary Orphan Ranger Award
Liya on Al Jazeera's Show Riz Khan
Liya Invited to Speak at Nationaal Press Club
Deliver Now! Saving 77 Million by 2015
Liya Featured on CNN's Revealed
Liya receives Smart Cooki Award
The Meeting of Women Parliamentarians
2006
Message from Liya to the WHO