Oral Statement at 54th CSW Session

ORAL STATEMENT DELIVERED AT THE 54TH SESSION OF THE UN COMMISSION ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN

1-12 MARCH 2010

This statement is delivered on behalf of Action Canada for Population and Development, Amnesty International, the Center for Economic and Social Rights, the Center for Reproductive Rights, Human Rights Watch, the International Initiative on Maternal Mortality and Human Rights, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Ipas, and the Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights.

Mr. President, distinguished delegates,

To achieve all Millennium Development Goals, a key challenge for governments is to address the human rights violations that hinder their meaningful and equitable progress. Preventable maternal mortality – the central concern of MDG5 – results from and leads to violations of women’s human rights, including violations of their sexual rights and reproductive rights.

Many governments violate girls’ human rights by failing to protect them from early marriage. Girls subjected to early marriage suffer rights violations, including lack of power to decide whether and when to be sexually active and become pregnant; lack of access to health information; heightened risks of pregnancy-related death and ill-health; and diminished opportunities for education, employment and other forms of empowerment. Governments acknowledged this in Human Rights Council resolution 11/8, which recognizes the links between preventable maternal mortality and morbidity and violations of human rights (including the rights to life; to be equal in dignity; to education; to be free to seek, receive and impart information; to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress; to freedom from discrimination; and to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including sexual and reproductive health).

It is in large part due to the failure of governments to address the underlying violations of women’s human rights comprehensively, that MDG5 has seen the poorest progress of all MDGs.

Mr President,

Breakthrough strategies against maternal mortality are grounded not only in best public health practice, but in a constructive framework of accountability and human rights. This is provided for in human rights treaties and commitments made in the Beijing Platform for Action and the Cairo Programme of Action.

The human rights framework helps ensure that successes in maternal mortality reduction do not mask unequal progress among and within countries, and discrimination or even retrogression experienced by specific groups of women. Putting gender equality and women’s full enjoyment of human rights at the centre of efforts to achieve MDG5 will lead to better outcomes for women and girls. Best practice emerges where maternal mortality reduction policies and programmes enhance women’s access to comprehensive sexual, reproductive and maternal health care and their ability to make all relevant decisions, including whether and when to become pregnant. To ensure the effectiveness of maternal mortality reduction policies, states need to enable women to realize their rights to participate in, and access information relating to, the decision-making processes which affect their pregnancy and child-birth. They need to explicitly link policies and programmes for maternal mortality reduction and universal access to reproductive health with their efforts, in their own country or as donors, to achieve the other MDGs (particularly MDG3 on gender equality and MDG6 on HIV/AIDS) and to devise and use targets and indicators to reflect these inter-linkages and women’s rights.

Identifying and addressing the human rights violations underlying preventable maternal deaths makes for good public health and poverty reduction policy. It is also an international legal obligation for all governments. Now is the time for governments to comprehensively review efforts undertaken thus far to address the root causes of maternal mortality and morbidity, notably violations of women’s human rights. The MDG Summit in September provides a crucial opportunity for all governments to agree on concrete strategies to ensure that laws, policies and programmes aimed at achieving MDG 5 are consistent with their obligations under international law and the pledges made at Beijing and Cairo.