CanWaCH delegation at ICFP 2025: Five questions with Kariane St-Denis

Hosted in Bogotá, Colombia, the 2025 International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) saw the global community gather from November 3 to 6 to share knowledge, strengthen partnerships, and drive global progress to sexual and reproductive health and rights and gender equality. CanWaCH was pleased to join the conference and support the attendance of youth and delegates from organizations across our membership. The following Q&A is part of a series of interviews with members of the CanWaCH delegation. Read all of the delegation’s insights on Write to Thrive.

Why did you want to attend ICFP 2025?  What drew you to being part of the CanWaCH delegation?

As a public health professional specializing in sexual and reproductive health and rights, I was eager to attend ICFP 2025 because it offered a rare and needed opportunity to step back from day-to-day program delivery and connect with the broader global sexual health and reproductive rights (SRHR) movement. 

In my role as the Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) Lead at the Canadian Association of Midwives, I work alongside midwifery associations and partners in South Sudan, the DRC, Venezuela, Haiti, Somalia and Somaliland, Tanzania, and Malawi. Across these contexts, I have seen midwives and their allies deliver respectful, rights-based care under extraordinarily challenging conditions. Their work embodies health equity in action and reinforces why sustained investment in SRHR is essential – especially now, as funding recedes and anti-rights movements gain prominence.

Attending ICFP was a way to bridge these frontline realities with global evidence, networks, and advocacy spaces. I wanted to deepen my ability to translate data into compelling narratives that highlight the value and impact of this work, as well as the risks of losing hard-won gains. ICFP’s equity-focused theme resonated strongly with me, as did the chance to reflect on how we, as a sector, confront growing threats to bodily autonomy and reproductive justice in today’s climate.

I was especially drawn to being part of the CanWaCH delegation. CanWaCH plays a special role in convening Canadian organizations committed to SRHR and maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH), and joining the delegation offered a more intentional, connected way to engage with the conference. 

The SRHR space is still riddled with internal siloes, but progress demands working across movements, thematic areas, and geographies. Being part of the delegation offered a concrete way to embody that principle, contributing to a more unified SRHR ecosystem that leverages collective strength for greater impact. We are stronger together. 

What was a moment at ICFP 2025 that made you stop and think differently about an issue? Did you hear a perspective that challenged your assumptions or changed your mind?

Rather than a single turning point, it was the steady undercurrent across many sessions that shifted my thinking. Throughout the conference, I gradually came to the realization that just as the systems we have built do not serve us and need to be rebuilt, so do our tools and measures of progress. Again and again, speakers highlighted the disconnect between what we say we value in SRHR, what we think we’re measuring, and what we actually measure. This convergence of ideas pushed me to reconsider how measurement shapes not only our narratives but our entire approach to impact and accountability.

Throughout the week, researchers presented emerging person-centred approaches. These included new constructs for measuring unintended pregnancy and unmet demand, multidimensional tools for assessing abortion care quality and reproductive empowerment, and systems-thinking methods like causal loop diagrams and population modelling. The latter is helping to illuminate the complex dynamics shaping people’s SRHR choices and shifting policy environments. These innovations reflect lived realities, negotiations and nuances that traditional indicators, still rooted in ideas of fertility control, have long failed to capture.

Yet, this sits in tension with the broader SRHR architecture, where global initiatives purportedly focused on access, including FP2030, continue to gauge success through commodity distribution and contraceptive uptake. Similarly, donors often resist richer, more complex measures in favour of standardized metrics that are easier to aggregate but less meaningful. I myself have often resorted to using globally accepted indicators that are not adapted to context nor able to capture a diversity of experiences.   

A comment by Mallika Dutt distilled the deeper challenge: we are trying to “fit” marginalized communities into systems never designed for them, instead of imagining new structures rooted in inclusivity, reciprocity, and care. And as Traci Baird reminded us, “Measure what matters… because what’s measured matters.”

These insights pushed me to rethink my own MEAL practice. Transforming SRHR outcomes ultimately requires transforming the paradigms that define progress. I am convinced, more than ever, of the need to fight for the indicators that reflect the principles of agency, dignity and equity, and feel reinvigorated in my ability to do so. 

If you had to describe ICFP 2025 in three words, what would they be?

Resilient. Data-driven. Deconstructive/Reconstructive. 

What makes these types of global gatherings important?

These types of global gatherings are critical. They provide a rare moment, in space and time, to convene actors working across a broad spectrum – from midwives, to scientists, to high-level political actors – to present a united front. 

I want to insist on this idea of breaking down siloes within the broader umbrella of SRHR: in practice, it is actually quite uncommon to find, for instance, maternal health and family planning (FP) advocates sharing the same space and reflecting on common priorities. Given the restrictive global context we are now living in, the polarized fertility narratives we are contending with, and entrenched realities such as climate change, which demand urgent attention, working together is no longer an option. It is imperative. Global gatherings such as ICFP provide a unique opportunity for this type of cross-movement dialogue as a precondition for transformative change.  

Reflecting on your knowledge and time at the conference, what’s one action someone reading this could take to support SRHR?

I’d invite readers to reflect on a salient statistic that came out of the FP2030 Impact Report released during the conference: Closing the global gap in unmet demand for contraception (estimated at $54B) would cost roughly $8 per person per year, roughly equivalent to the cost of a latte in many countries.

But how we invest these funds is also a key part of the equation. With global health and household surveys like the demographic health survey (DHS) shrinking, and funding for SRHR under existential threat, country-led systems that generate routine, equity-focused data, especially those maintained by midwives, nurses, and frontline providers, are becoming the backbone of decision-making. Despite this, these everyday data systems remain chronically under-resourced and undervalued.

Investing in routine data (whether through funding, programming, or advocacy) strengthens the very infrastructure that ensures services are delivered, gaps are identified, and communities are heard. It shifts power closer to those who understand the context best and helps build resilient, country-owned systems that can withstand political and financial shocks.

As one speaker put it, “Routine data are the infrastructure of trust.” I believe that supporting them is one of the most practical and transformative ways to advance SRHR for all. Connect with Kariane on LinkedIn!