Asia

The roundtable focused on one critically important and often neglected component of a human rights-based approach to maternal mortality: accountability.

What exactly does a human rights approach to maternal mortality reduction efforts involve?

"Unless India actually counts all the women who die because of childbirth, it won't be able to prevent those thousands of unnecessary deaths. Accountability might seem like an abstract concept, but for Indian women it's a matter of life and death."

At the invitation of the Indian government, the Special Rapporteur on the right to health visited India in late 2007.

The mission focused on the issue of maternal mortality with a view to understanding, in the context of the right to the highest attainable standard of health, the steps taken by India to reduce this phenomenon, and to make constructive recommendations.

This note provides some preliminary observations arising from the mission.

New publication of the IIMMHR! This brief draws on three recent examples of civil society groups engaged with budgets to explore the relevance of civil society budget analysis and advocacy and its potential as a tool to hold governments accountable for their maternal mortality reduction commitments.

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This is the website of Negotiating Rights, an effort to build coalitions towards improving maternal health in Uttar Pradesh, India, by engaging simultaneously with policy actors, programme managers, service providers and women users of maternal health services.