Francoise Girard

International Women's Health Coalition

Françoise Girard is the President of the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC). She recently concluded a six-year tenure as the Director of the Public Health Program at Open Society Foundations (OSF). Françoise also was Regional Director for Southern Central and Eastern Europe and Haiti at OSF in the 1990s. From 1999 to 2003, she was Senior Program Officer for International Policy at IWHC. She has played a key role in advocacy in UN agencies and UN Conferences such as ICPD+5, Beijing+5, Special Session on HIV/AIDS and on Children, ICPD+10, and the 2005 World Summit on the MDGs. She currently serves as Chair of the Advisory Committee of the Health and Human Rights Division of Human Rights Watch and was the Chair of the Leadership Programme Committee of the 2010 International AIDS Conference, a 20,000+ participant biannual scientific conference. She has contributed many articles to peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Health and Human Rights, and International Family Planning Perspectives; and her other writings include “Negotiating Sexual Rights and Sexual Orientation at the United Nations,” in SexPolitics: the Front Lines, 2007; and “Advocacy for Sexuality and Women’s Rights: Continuities, Discontinuities and Strategies since ICPD” in Reproductive Health and Human Rights: The Way Forward, 2009. Françoise holds an M.A. in Political Science from McGill University and an LL.B. from the Université de Montréal, and she was a law clerk to Justice Charles Gonthier of the Supreme Court of Canada.