As the United States approaches its 2014 deadline for military withdrawal from Afghanistan, one often overshadowed aspect of the conflict is the hard-won progress made by previously marginalized segments of the Afghan population, particularly women, girls, and young people.[Video Below]

According to the UN Population Fund, more than 140 million girls will become child brides between 2011 and 2020 – an estimated 14.2 million young girls marrying too young every year or 39,000 daily. The majority of these girls do not receive access to education or reproductive health services. [Video Below]

“The places in the world where the environment is most fragile, women’s health is most fragile,” said Leila Darabi, director of global communications for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, at the Wilson Center. “The negative impacts on the environment tend to affect women the most. Women are the people who are planting kitchen gardens, women are traditional healers, and so they often feel the impact first when those things are degraded.”

Despite increases in the availability of maternal health care across Nigeria, maternal mortality rates remain high, averaging 630 per 100,000 live births in 2010, compared to the world average of 210. “This is data we are not proud of,” said Philippa Momah, board director of Nigeria’s White Ribbon Alliance, at the Wilson Center. “We believe that one of the issues is the way health care providers treat our women. This may be causing a 20 percent drop-out rate in the health care system.” [Video Below]

“In the post-Cold War period, the challenges of energy, environment, climate change, and water have become very much a part of our fundamental transatlantic relationship,” said CNA General Counsel Sherri Goodman, launching a new report on U.S.-EU security at the Wilson Center. [Video Below]

How can NGOs and civil society promote environmental protection and improve people’s health and livelihoods in remote tropical forests? Two NGOs with innovative programs in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea spoke at the Wilson Center on May 30 about their efforts to simultaneously tackle these issues and highlight their intricate relationship. 

“Today we have a golden opportunity to use respectful maternal care to break new ground at the intersection of health and human rights,” said Lynn Freedman, director of the Averting Maternal Death and Disability Program and professor of clinical population and family health at Columbia University, at the Wilson Center.

As President Obama readies a new road map for addressing climate change in the United States, experts warn that poorly designed and implemented initiatives, especially in already-fragile parts of the world, could unintentionally provoke conflicts, rather than diffuse them.