In April this year, the German parliamentary group on population and development hosted the She Matters conference in Berlin. This conference was actually stimulated by a request from German Chancellor Merkel, who will be the leader of the next G7 summit that had determined that the key aspect of this conference, amongst economic issues, would be the empowerment of women, and she hoped that, at that conference, the G7 would draw attention to the fact that the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls are key prerequisites for their empowerment, as they enable women and girls to lead self-determined, healthy and productive lives.
