The highly anticipated United Nations Sustainable Development Summit took place 25-27 September, with Heads of State and Government adopting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 9000 people took part in the summit, which was co-chaired by the Prime Minister of Denmark Lars Lokke Rasmussen and the President of Uganda Yoweri Museveni; the summit included plenary discussions, six interactive dialogues and an informal meeting on preparations for COP 21.

In collaboration with the Guttmacher Institute, The Lancet is establishing a Commission on sexual and reproductive health and rights in the post-2015 world, with the aim of developing a wide-ranging and evidence-based agenda for key sexual and reproductive health and rights priorities worldwide over the next 15 years. The Commission will particularly emphasise crucial elements that have been overlooked or neglected in the SDGs, but will encompass all SRHR issues.

Hopes were high ahead of the 31st August-4th September intergovernmental climate change negotiations in Bonn, but the slow pace of the technical negotiations lagged behind the political rhetoric. The 83-page document requires significant effort to slim it down to a manageable length for a UN agreement, and with only 5 negotiating days remaining before the 21st Conference of Parties (COP 21) in December in Paris, it is as yet unclear whether consensus will be reached on a transformative agenda.

The Council of the European Union released on 18th September its conclusions on the UN Climate Change Conference to be held in Paris in December. The conclusions underline the critical importance of the conference and emphasizes that all Parties should pursue transformative ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% by 2050 in order to avoid reaching the 2°C warming danger threshold.

On 9th September, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on ‘Empowering girls through education in the EU’ which called for gender equality measures to be applied at all levels of the education system. The resolution emphasized the need to include vulnerable and marginalized women and girls, and attention was paid to the importance of inclusive and accurate sex education in schools.

53 organisations working on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls within Europe and globally signed an open letter written by Concord Europe and the European Women’s Lobby calling on Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, to transform his commitment to gender equality from rhetoric to practice.

Each year at the Annual General Meeting, EuroNGOs hosts an election for the Steering Committee: in November 2015 we will be electing two new members of the committee and appointing the organization that will host the 2016 EuroNGOs conference and AGM. Are you interested in running for election and be part of the governance of the network?

EuroNGOs is pleased to welcome a new Portuguese member, P&D Factor – The Association for Cooperation on Population and Development. Since its foundation in November 2012, P&D Factor has become a major player in Portuguese development cooperation, and we are delighted to have them as part of our network.

In exactly one month we will be welcoming 160 participants to the 2015 EuroNGOs International Conference, "SRHR in the post-2015 agenda and beyond: mapping the way forward” in Oslo, Norway. Preparations are being finalised for the exciting two-day conference, hosted by our member Sex og Politikk, the Norwegian Association for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights.

Ahead of the UN Summit for the adoption of the post-2015 development agenda, 25-27 September, EuroNGOs joined forces with our European partners for two advocacy actions: to encourage Heads of State or Government to support sexual and reproductive health and rights in their statements, and to contribute to the IAEG-SDGs consultation on indicators.

Our member the Federation for Women and Family Planning (Federa) was involved in the mobilization of the feminist and pro-choice community in Warsaw to protest against a draft bill aiming to ban access to legal abortion in all cases in Poland. The bill was rejected by the Polish Parliament on 11th September.

SEXUAL HEALTH Switzerland has recently launched a Coalition for Sexuality Education in order to raise awareness of sexual education among all NGOs working with children and youth. The Coalition provides tools and support to its members to improve the implementation of sexuality education in all settings, not just schools.

The European Parliamentary Working Group on Reproductive Health, HIV/AIDS and Development (EPWG) held an event on “Faith and Family Planning” on 16th September at the European Parliament, chaired by MEPs Sophie in ‘t Veld (Liberals and Democrats) and Heidi Hautala (Greens). The event aimed to demonstrate and discuss the ways in which religious leaders and faith-based groups can be used to spread knowledge of and advocate for family planning.