Joint Contribution to OHCHR Study on Human Rights and Preventable Maternal Mortality and Morbidity

With the adoption of its landmark resolution 11/8, entitled “Preventable Maternal Mortality and Morbidity, and Human Rights”, the Human Rights Council has affirmed that the issue of maternal mortality and morbidity is a part of the global human rights agenda and has also placed the issue squarely within the Council’s own agenda. The resolution represents the first international intergovernmental recognition that maternal mortality and morbidity is a human rights issue. We have congratulated all co-sponsors for their support and also congratulated all Council Members for joining consensus on this important text, and wish to reiterate these congratulations.

The study requested by the Council is doubtless an important part of what will underpin the work of the Council in this area. We hope that this study will constitute only the first of many steps in which the Council will receive information as to the human rights dimensions of maternal mortality and morbidity and seek to contribute constructively to its eradication. In short, we would ask: how can the Council best and most effectively the commitment it has made through the adoption of resolution 11/8 to address preventable maternal mortality and morbidity and its causes from the perspective of human rights as part of its work? Part of what the Council has requested in the study is an assessment of how the human rights dimensions of preventable maternal mortality and morbidity can be better addressed within the UN system. As the primary UN political body responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights as well as for the mainstreaming of human rights throughout the UN system, the Human Rights Council clearly has a central and important role to play in eradicating preventable maternal mortality and morbidity by addressing the issue through its human rights mandate and focus.

The present contribution to this study focuses on what the Council must do to effectively discharge these two responsibilities (i.e. promoting and protecting all human rights and the mainstreaming of human rights throughout the UN system) with respect to its work on preventable maternal mortality and morbidity.