Family Planning is an Unrealized Human Right Forty years ago this month, family planning was officially declared a universal human right by the United Nations International Conference on Human Rights, meeting in Tehran. The Roman Catholic Church was among those present when the gathering declared that “Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children.”
But governments around the world continue to deny this right – most recently in Chile.
On April 4, Chile’s Constitutional Court barred public health facilities from continuing to distribute emergency contraceptives. Much of the population depends on these facilities for their basic care. With abortion illegal under all circumstances in Chile, this decision removes one more way for women to avoid unintended pregnancy.
In the Philippines, hospitals and clinics in Manila City have been banned since 2000 from distributing any kind of modern birth control. Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration denied over-the-counter access to emergency contraception to women under 18. And international funding from donor countries and agencies for family planning has declined steadily since 1995.
More than 200 million women worldwide have an unmet need for contraceptives. Demand is expected to grow by 40 percent in the next 15 years: half the people on earth are under 25 and every year millions more of them become sexually active and seek smaller families. At the moment, 190 million women become pregnant each year, about half of them unintentionally. Nearly 50 million resort to abortions. One woman dies every minute from pregnancy-related complications – more than ten million deaths per generation.
One in three of these deaths could be avoided if women who want to use effective contraception had access to it. Family planning is a recognized human right, but it is not yet a reality.
Conference Opens on Improving Maternal and Child Health CAPE TOWN, South Africa, April 17 – Delegations from countries where mothers and children are at high risk of dying gathered here today for a three-day conference with funders and global health advocates on the ways and means of lowering that risk.
The estimated 450 participants planned to discuss the findings of a new report, entitled Countdown to 2015: Tracking Progress in Maternal, Newborn and Child Survival, which evaluated action since 1990 in 68 developing countries that account for 97 percent of maternal and child deaths worldwide.
It found that only 16 of those countries are on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing child deaths by half. Only three countries have lowered their maternal mortality rates significantly, indicating a general lack of movement toward MDG 5, which calls for reducing maternal deaths by 75 percent by 2015.
Delegations from 61 of those high-risk countries are expected to take part in the gathering at the Westin Grand Hotel here, which ends Saturday. Events include special sessions with parliamentarians and donor country representatives attending the 118th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
Dr. Gertrude Mongella, president of the Pan-African Parliament, said in a speech yesterday that parliamentarians and governments must lead the way in saving the lives of women and children. "There are 45,000 parliamentarians globally," she said. "If we all beat that drum--for maternal, newborn and child survival--the budgets would change. The time is over for talking. We need action."
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Report Finds Little Progress on Saving Mothers' and Newborns' Lives LONDON, April 15 – Most of the countries where mothers and newborns are at highest risk have not yet made adequate investments in the basic health services that could help them survive, according to a new report on global progress in that area.
The study, Countdown to 2015: Tracking Progress in Maternal, Newborn and Child Survival, was conducted by United Nations agencies, universities and non-governmental organizations to evaluate action since 1990 in 68 developing countries that account for 97 percent of maternal and child deaths worldwide. It is the subject of a three-day conference of government policy-makers, health experts and advocates that opens Thursday in Cape Town, South Africa.
"Children and mothers are dying because those who have the power to prevent their deaths choose not to act," said Dr. Richard Horton, editor of the British medical journal The Lancet, in an editorial introducing this week's special issue on the report.
The Cape Town conference April 17-19 will involve special sessions with parliamentarians invited from the 68 high-risk countries and donor nations attending the 118th Assembly there of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. They will debate the terms of a Statement of Commitment to steps toward achieving Millennium Development Goals on improving maternal and child health by 2015.
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