International Confederation of Midwives (ICM)
Sandra Oyarzo Torres, President
For me, seeing the smiles of women when they have made their own decisions, hearing their dreams and holding their trust is the highest honour of being a midwife. For this reason I have advocated for women’s rights to abortion in Chile and across Latin and Central America.
As the President of ICM, I know that midwives have a central role to play in ensuring abortion services are safe and available. For this reason, I am a proud SheDecides Champion.
Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent
Chief Midwife
It is my passion to ensure that all women and gender diverse people have the same health experiences and outcomes as those who have the best. As a SheDecides Champion, I advocate for every woman to have the ability to make her own choices, knowing she has access to safe sexual and reproductive health services from a midwife.
Sylvia Hamata
Midwife and Lawyer
Throughout my career I have advocated for safe abortion access and to reduce the stigma of abortion care in my own country. As a SheDecides Champion, I am working to ensure that no matter where they live, women have access to safe abortion services.
Daniela Drandić
Head of Advocacy and Communications
With the global backlash against sexual and reproductive rights, we must all raise our voices to ensure that women all over the world can access safe and dignified health services. As a SheDecides Champion, I advocate for midwives being trained and enabled to provide comprehensive abortion services, as a way of improving service quality and reach, including to marginalised groups.
Scaling midwifery is a sustainable way to ensure reproductive justice for everyone.
How we are working so SheDecides
Midwives are critical for sexual and reproductive justice. Evidence of our positive impact is overwhelming: Midwives trained and enabled to practise according to ICM Standards can provide 90% of all sexual, reproductive, maternal and newborn health services – including counselling and provision of contraception and comprehensive abortion care services.
As the global voice for over one million midwives in over 100 countries, the International Confederation of Midwives, is proud to be a SheDecides Champion.
Essential Competencies for Midwifery Practice
The ICM Essential Competencies for Midwifery Practice (2024) outline the minimum set of knowledge, skills, and professional behaviours required to use the designation of midwife as defined by ICM when entering midwifery practice. The Essential Competencies specifically outline the role of midwives in providing sexual and reproductive health services, including counselling and provision of contraception and comprehensive abortion care services.
Read MoreComprehensive Abortion Care (CAC) Workshops
Together with partners including WHO, ICM is working to ensure that our regional conferences include hands-on workshops on comprehensive abortion care. We are especially proud of our South-To-North Collaboration, where midwives from Africa have come to teach colleagues from Europe about providing CAC.
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Visibility of Midwives Providing Contraception and Comprehensive Abortion Care Services
ICM’s newsletter regularly features the experiences and stories of midwives supporting and providing comprehensive abortion care services from around the globe. Subscribe to the newsletter to find out more!
Read MoreAbout the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM)
ICM has been the global voice of midwives and midwives’ associations for more than 100 years. The midwifery model of care is based on respect, dignity, compassion, and the promotion of human rights for all. This includes the right to access quality care from autonomous midwives. Midwives have a broad role in providing universal sexual reproductive health service according to the ICM Definition and Scope of Practice of a Midwife.
We currently represent over 136 midwives’ associations (MAs) in 117 countries – more than one million midwives globally. We are a trusted partner for technical consultations, capacity building, knowledge sharing, promoting human rights and sustainability.
ICM is an accredited non-governmental organisation registered in The Netherlands. We have a large geographic scope and networks in sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health and rights.
We envision a world where every childbearing woman has access to a midwife’s care for herself and her newborn.
Our mission is to strengthen midwives’ associations and to advance the profession of midwifery globally by promoting autonomous midwives as the most appropriate caregivers for childbearing women and in keeping birth normal, to enhance the reproductive health of women, their newborns and their families.
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