At their last meeting in April ( before the end of the mandate of the European Parliament ), the EP All Party Working Group on the separation of Religion and Politics (WGSRP) of which IPPF EN is a member,  invited Dimitrina Petrova, Executive Director of The Equal Rights Trust ( www.equalrightstrust.org ) and member of the Network of European Foundations ( http://www.nefic.org/ ) steering committee on Religion and Democracy to present the project entitled: “The State, Religious Diversity and Healthcare in Europe”.

The purpose of this project which started in June 2008 is to draft a thematic dossier mapping out the problem field on “The State, Religious Diversity and Healthcare in Europe”. The project aims to identify problems, indicate possible solutions and give access to a range of strategies in relation to religious diversity and healthcare in Europe to facilitate and benefit practitioners, policy makers and civil society actors.  In respect of religious discrimination in healthcare provision, the project will scan and formulate the state of the play in respect to general healthcare (dietary requirements, clothing, burial ritual, male circumcision, equitable public facilities, organ/tissue donation, blood transfusion, smoking, etc.), sexual and reproductive health (contraception, abortion, infertility treatment, access to information, female genital mutilation, HIV/AIDS, STDs), and mental health. It will also examine the thematic field from the angle of the healthcare implications of religious observance. The study which should be soon available from both websites mentioned above will be presented in the format of a concept paper, structuring the problem field and briefly setting out the issues, the discourses and the state of existing research.

The WGSRP (see: http://politicsreligion.com/headlines.html)  is an informal grouping of European parliamentarians, meeting regularly with members of civil society, namely to identify issues pertaining to the intersection of religion and politics in which the political values and principles of the European Union (EU) are at stake.