Health Systems and Policies

This fact sheet summarizes the key components of the 2009 Human Rights Council resolution on maternal mortality, and outlines key steps that advocates, governments, and donors can take to encourage its implementation.

"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.

On June 5 2009, IIMMHR participated in a panel of international and national experts during the 11th Session of the UN Human Rights Council.

Also available in English and French.

This report examines the often neglected topic of maternal morbidity, or women’s illnesses and injuries related to pregnancy and childbirth.

Among the report's recommendations:

• Increase resources to sexual and reproductive health and rights
• Encourage equitable health care
• Make governments accountable

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.

"ICPD cemented the foundation of human rights to achieve, among other things, health. This has permitted the construction of a framework for advocacy, accountability, and programming...[and] it permits an analysis of government action and inaction in terms of conduct and results."