Abstract
Alicia Yamin argues that applying human rights frameworks and approaches to maternal health offers strategies and tools to address the root causes of maternal morbidity and mortality within and beyond health systems, in addition to addressing other violations of women's sexual and reproductive health and rights. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary.
Highlights
In recent years, growing attention has been paid to human rights-based approaches (HRBAs) to health and development issues, such as HIV/AIDS, water and sanitation, and child health, from non-governmental organizations, and from UN bodies [1]
It was always clear that an array of civil and political, as well as economic and social, rights were relevant to women surviving childbirth [4]. It was not until the mid-1990s that a growing consensus emerged in public health that the majority of obstetric complications are neither predictable nor preventable and that, rather than identify high-risk pregnancies, the key to addressing maternal morbidity and mortality (MMM)
Landmark litigation had been brought at both domestic and international levels, establishing important precedents regarding the obligations of governments to provide reproductive health care, including mandating expenditures and the exercise of due diligence with respect to private actors, as well as access to safe abortions [21,22,23,24]
Summary
In recent years, growing attention has been paid to human rights-based approaches (HRBAs) to health and development issues, such as HIV/AIDS, water and sanitation, and child health, from non-governmental organizations, and from UN bodies [1]. Interest in applying human rights frameworks and HRBAs to maternal health offers strategies and tools to address root causes of maternal morbidity and mortality (MMM) within and beyond health systems, as well as other violations of women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) across their lives, including poverty, gender inequality, and structural violence against women, rather than promoting technical fixes [2,3]. N Applying human rights frameworks and human rights-based approaches (HRBAs) to maternal health offers strategies and tools to address root causes of maternal morbidity and mortality (MMM) within and beyond health systems, as well as other violations of women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) across their lives, including poverty, gender inequality, and structural violence against women, rather than promoting short-term technical fixes. It was only in 2005 that MDG 5B was added, calling for ‘‘universal access to reproductive health,’’ and MDG 5B has been among the most lagging of targets (Figure 1)
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