Abstract
Andrew Gibbs and colleagues discuss the African Women's Protocol, a framework for ensuring reproductive rights are supported throughout the continent and for supporting interventions to improve women's reproductive health, including the MDGs.
Highlights
The fifth goal—to improve maternal health—has made the least progress, with 350,000 women still dying annually of pregnancy-related causes [2]; the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) outcome document expresses ‘‘grave concern over the slow progress being made on reducing maternal mortality and improving maternal and reproductive health’’ [1]
Underlying the failure to meaningfully progress towards achieving MDGs 3, 5, and 6, in Africa, is the failure to protect and promote women’s human rights, including their reproductive rights
The United Nations Population Fund [6] outlines the three components of reproductive rights: the right to control sexual and reproductive lives, the right to nondiscrimination, and the right to reproductive health care. This creates a framework that supports women’s rights to insist and engage in safer sex and to access comprehensive and accurate information on HIV/AIDS and family planning and comprehensive reproductive health care, which includes termination of pregnancy and post-abortion care
Summary
The international community recently reviewed 10 years of progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The many barriers to the promotion and protection of women’s reproductive rights in Africa undermines women’s ability to take control of their sexual health, fertility, autonomy, and participation in social and economic life. Discrete interventions to promote women’s health, tackle HIV/AIDS, and reduce maternal mortality are unlikely to work if wider laws and policies continue to undermine women’s reproductive rights. It contains the first references to HIV/AIDS in an international treaty, and the first expression of a right to abortion, albeit limited to where a pregnancy is the result of sexual assault, rape, or where it endangers a woman’s mental or physical health It recognises marital rape as a form of gender-based violence. Strengthening and ensuring the utilisation of accountability mechanisms contained in the African Women’s
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