Start-up workshop Debre Zeit, Ethiopia

The start-up workshop for the SAFEZT project “Competing discourses impacting girls’ and women’s rights: Fertility control and safe abortion in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia”, took place at Leisak Resort, Bishoftu/Debre Zeit in Ethiopia 3-5 March 2016. Most of the researchers involved in the project, including PhDs, postdoctoral fellows and project leaders from the four countries – Norway, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia – attended the workshop.

To set the scene, speakers from three academic institutions gave presentation on the problem of fertility control and unsafe abortion in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia. As representatives of civil society organizations in Ethiopia, Dereje Wondimu, Head of Policy Unit at IPAS and Heran Abebe, Head of Gender Department, Pathfinder International, spoke about abortion from gender- and juridical perspectives.

A red thread for the three day discussion was methodological, analytical and theroterical approaches to 'cross cutting studies' on fertility control and unsafe abortion among adolescents. Presentations of PhD and postdoctoral projects in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia were followed by group work on further development of the project components within the country teams such as the study focus, collaboration, and the establishment of North-South supervisory teams.

The next workshop will be held in Zambia October 2017.