World Health Assembly Adopts First Global Strategy on Reproductive Health--U.S. Only Country to Reject Plan

US Dissociates from 191 Countries’ Resolution to Accelerate Global Progress on Reproductive Health

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Jennine Meyer: (914) 833-7093 jmeyer@douglasgould.com Ivette Zamora: (914) 833-7093 izamora@douglasgould.com

By Jennine Meyer

May 26, 2004 – While the United States “dissociated” itself from the consensus, the World Health Organization's first strategy on reproductive health was adopted by the 57th World Health Assembly (WHA). Reproductive and sexual ill-health accounts for 20% of the global burden of ill-health for women and 14% for men.

"Once again, the Bush Administration has shown their true colors by calling for a reproductive health policy that is more about ideology than reality,” said Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA). “We have a moral responsibility to ensure the health and well-being of women and men around the world." Each year, some eight million of the estimated 210 million women who become pregnant, suffer life-threatening complications related to pregnancy, many experiencing long-term morbidities and disabilities. In 2000, an estimated 529 000 women died during pregnancy and childbirth from largely preventable causes.

Leading global development and health advocates directly link poor sexual and reproductive health to extreme poverty, and call for global health policy to foster healthier mothers and infants, reduce maternal deaths, and decrease injury and death from unsafe abortion. The United States delegation, however, read a lengthy statement of the “flaws” it sees in the WHO strategy.

The U.S. does not recognize the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which the resolution included. They took issue with the term "sexual health rights," asserting this term has not been recognized as a human rights term anywhere and argued that the term "unsafe abortion" should not be used as it implies that other abortion is acceptable. In addition, the US denied the validity of the WHO statistics on the risks of unsafe sex. The U.S. expressed regret that the board had not, as requested, extended time to modify the strategy as that would have provided a strategy "with wide support," despite the fact that all other countries supported it. The U.S. requested that its position of disassociation be reflected in the report of the WHA.

"While the U.S. government used to be a champion of support for family planning, safe motherhood programs and girls' education, it is now an impediment to progress" said Jill Sheffield, Family Care International. "The Bush Administration is ignoring the reality that strengthening the health and well-being of families in poor countries will make the world a better, safer place for us all."

The strategy comes in response to a WHA resolution requesting WHO to develop a strategy for accelerating progress towards the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994, and its five-year follow-up (ICPD+5).

"The strong endorsement of this strategy by the WHA represents an unequivocal message that countries are committed to do all they can to achieve the goals and targets of the ICPD Program of Action adopted in 1994," says Dr Paul Van Look, Director of WHO's Department of Reproductive Health and Research. "The Strategy gives our Member States and the Organization itself a clear roadmap on how we can work together in the coming years to achieve the ICPD goals."

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