59th Session of the UN Human Rights Council
Item 3: Interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the right to health
Thursday 20 June, 2025
Presentation of report: Health and care workers as defenders of the right to health
Center for Reproductive Rights, Akãhatã, Sexual Rights Initiative
Thank you, President.
Akãhatã makes this statement on behalf of the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Sexual Rights Initiative. We welcome the Special Rapporteur’s report, which acknowledges the demand for the recognition of unpaid care work in her definition of care workers, and emphasizes the importance of unpaid care in maintaining and improving people’s health, including sexual and reproductive health.
We underscore the crucial role of community-based networks—generally composed of women. Their support and provision of information, supplies, and services in relation to reproductive decisions and needs, including abortion, are essential both for the effective exercise of rights and for preventing serious harm and loss of life.
As set out in the report, community-based care workers face grave risks in contexts where abortion is criminalized: prosecution and other legal sanctions, persecution, harassment, and violence—including sexual violence—by both state and non-state actors.
States must protect the rights of individuals who are part of community-based networks providing unpaid health care, including by recognizing their contribution to the effective realization of the right to health, particularly sexual and reproductive health.
We strongly support the Rapporteur’s rights-based approach to sexual and reproductive health, including the right to abortion and access to contraception, including emergency contraception.
We urge States to legalize regular and emergency contraception and voluntary, safe, and free abortion, ensuring that all people with the capacity to become pregnant can access information, medications, and medical services without barriers or reprisals, and can exercise their bodily autonomy in conditions of safety and dignity.
Thank you.