Preventable Maternal Mortality and Morbidity and Human Rights in Humanitarian Settings

Urges all States to eliminate preventable maternal mortality and to respect, protect and fulfil sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, in accordance with the Beijing Platform for Action and the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and their review conference and outcome documents, and the right to have full control over and decide freely and responsibly on all matters relating to sexuality and sexual and reproductive health, free from discrimination, coercion and violence, including through the removal of legal barriers and the development and enforcement of policies, good practices and legal frameworks that respect bodily autonomy and guarantee universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, evidence-based information and education within a human rights-based approach, including for family planning, safe and effective methods of modern contraception, emergency contraception, universal access to health care, including quality maternal health care, such as skilled birth attendance and emergency obstetric care, safe abortion in accordance with international human rights law and where not against national law, the prevention and treatment of reproductive tract infections, sexually transmitted infections, HIV and reproductive cancers, and the integration of sexual and reproductive health into national health strategies and programmes for all women and girls, including adolescents;

Urges States, in accordance with obligations under relevant provisions of international human rights law, including the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including sexual and reproductive health, to ensure the availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of health-care services, including mental health care and psychosocial services and sexual and reproductive health-care services, free of coercion, discrimination and violence;

Calls upon States to pay special attention to the particular situation of adolescent girls in humanitarian settings who may have to assume adult responsibilities and are exposed to higher risks of sexual and gender-based violence, child, early and forced marriage and trafficking, and are likely to be denied education, skills training, safe employment opportunities and access to sexual and reproductive health-care services and information, and to face isolation, discrimination and stigma, mental health issues and risk-taking behaviour;

Encourages all stakeholders to consider promoting and using the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s Guidelines for Integrating Gender-based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Action, the its Gender Handbook and the Inter-agency Field Manual on Reproductive Health in Humanitarian Settings, and to ensure delivery of the Minimum Initial Service Package for Reproductive Health at the onset of humanitarian emergencies, with particular attention to women and girls facing multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and in situations of vulnerability, and to ensure a transition, as soon as possible, towards comprehensive sexual and reproductive health-care services, information and evidence-based education;

Encourages Governments, local authorities, the United Nations system and regional organizations, and invites donors and other assisting countries, to address the vulnerabilities and capacities of women and girls through gender-responsive programming, including with regard to sexual and reproductive health needs and the means to address sexual and gender-based violence and various forms of exploitation during emergencies and in post-disaster environments, and the allocation of resources in their disaster risk reduction, response and recovery efforts in coordination with the Governments of affected countries;

Strongly urges States and all parties to armed conflict to take effective measures to prevent and address acts of violence, attacks and threats against medical personnel and humanitarian personnel exclusively assigned to medical duties, their means of transport and equipment, as well as hospitals and other medical facilities in armed conflict, including through the development of domestic legal frameworks to ensure respect for their relevant international legal obligations;

Requests States and other relevant actors to give renewed emphasis to maternal mortality and morbidity initiatives in their development partnerships and international assistance and cooperation arrangements, including by strengthening technical cooperation to address maternal mortality and morbidity, including through the transfer of expertise, technology and scientific data and exchanging good practices with developing countries, while honouring existing commitments, and to integrate a human rights-based perspective into such initiatives, addressing the impact that discrimination against women and girls has on maternal mortality and morbidity;

Urges States to ensure that laws, policies and practices respect women’s bodily autonomy and privacy and the equal right to decide autonomously in matters regarding their own lives and health by bringing laws and policies concerning sexual and reproductive health, including international assistance policies, into line with international human rights law and repealing discriminatory laws relating to third-party authorization for health information and health-care services, and combating gender stereotypes, norms and behaviours that are discriminatory;

Also urges States to ensure access to justice and accountability mechanisms and timely and effective remedies for the effective implementation and enforcement of laws aimed at preventing violations of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including sexual and reproductive health, including those aimed at preventing maternal mortality and morbidity, including in humanitarian settings, such as by informing women of their rights under relevant international and domestic law and by improving legal and health infrastructure and removing all barriers in access to legal counselling, assistance and remedies;

Further urges States to ensure accountability and gender-sensitive, prompt and effective remedies for the violation of the rights of women and girls in relation to maternal mortality and morbidity in humanitarian settings by including transparent forms of monitoring, review and oversight of humanitarian programmes and policies, including the monitoring of inequities;

Calls upon States to support gender equality and women’s rights and the rights of the child, including within families, through awareness-raising initiatives, including in schools and in displaced and refugee camps and settlements, especially education and public awareness-raising, including through the media and online, the incorporation of curricula on all women’s and girls’ rights into teacher training courses, including the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence and discrimination, and ensuring universal access to evidence-based comprehensive sexuality education consistent with the evolving capacities of the child;

Urges States and encourages other relevant stakeholders, including national human rights institutions and non-governmental organizations, to take action at all levels, utilizing a comprehensive human rights-based approach to address the interlinked causes of maternal mortality and morbidity, such as lack of accessible, affordable and appropriate health-care services for all, and of information and education, lack of access to medicine and medical equipment, all types of malnutrition, lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation, poverty, underdevelopment, human and material shortages facing health-care systems, humanitarian and funding shortages affecting hospitals, technical assistance, capacity-building and training needs, harmful practices, including child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation, early childbearing, gender-based inequalities and all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls, to take concrete measures to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls, especially adolescent girls, and to ensure access to accountability for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, including effective reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence, such as the prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence committed in humanitarian settings, while ensuring the meaningful and effective participation of women and girls in the relevant processes;

Calls upon all relevant actors, including Governments, regional organizations, relevant United Nations agencies, national human rights institutions, entities providing humanitarian assistance and civil society organizations to, within their respective mandates, strengthen their efforts to reduce preventable maternal mortality and morbidity in humanitarian settings when designing, implementing and reviewing policies and evaluating programmes to reduce preventable maternal mortality and morbidity, while ensuring the meaningful participation of women and girls in all decisions that affect them;

Calls upon States to ensure a more holistic and coordinated approach to the humanitarian-development nexus that places the individual woman and girl at the centre of humanitarian preparedness and response, and recognizes the need to overcome siloed approaches and fragmented programming;

Also calls upon States to ensure the effective and meaningful participation of women and girls, including through civil society and feminist networks and women’s rights organizations, in identifying and determining needs, priorities for funding and service, processes for access and delivery, and crisis response, in recognition of their agency;

Urges States to strengthen their statistical capacity and to promote reliable transparent, collaborative and disaggregated data collection on the availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of sexual and reproductive health-care services for all women and girls in affected populations, including host populations;

Invites States to consider the systematic integration of sexual and reproductive health as an integral part of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health into the mandates of investigative bodies established by the Human Rights Council, including commissions of inquiry and fact-finding missions, and to address human rights violations suffered by women in humanitarian settings;

Requests the High Commissioner to prepare, from within existing resources, in consultation with States, United Nations agencies and all other relevant stakeholders, a follow-up report on good practices and challenges to respecting, protecting and fulfilling all human rights in the elimination of preventable maternal mortality and morbidity, including through the utilization of the technical guidance by States and other relevant actors, including the United Nations Population Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) and the World Health Organization, and to present it to the Human Rights Council at its forty-fifth session;

Also requests the High Commissioner, in collaboration with the Inter-agency Working Group on Reproductive Health in Crises, the United Nations Population Fund, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and other United Nations specialized agencies, funds and programmes, international human rights mechanisms, entities providing humanitarian assistance and civil society organizations, to organize a two-day meeting in 2019 to discuss good practices, gaps and challenges in the application of a human rights-based approach to the implementation of policies and programmes to reduce preventable maternal mortality and morbidity in humanitarian settings, and to submit a summary report thereon to the Human Rights Council at its forty-second session;