Assessing the International Community's Commitment to Reproductive Rights

By Teresa MacLean, 2L, Action Canada for Population and Development (Ottawa)

At the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), states officially recognized for the first time that reproductive health and rights are critical for the empowerment of women and necessary for the achievement of population and development programmes. In 1995, the international community built on the gains of the ICPD by creating the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA), where it was recognized that the “human rights of women include their right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination and violence.” At these conferences, states committed both to ensuring that the sexual and reproductive health needs of their populations are met, and to focusing on the rights of people—in particu- lar women and girls—as opposed to demo- graphic targets. The outcome documents of these conferences, as well as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), are nearing their final reviews in 2014 and 2015. The international community will then turn its attention to a new development agenda, which will likely be premised on sustainability. As such, this is a pivotal time to reflect on the MDGs, their impact and the international status of reproductive health and rights more generally.

This past summer I had the pleasure of working at Action Canada for Population and Development (ACPD). ACPD is an organization based in Ottawa that advocates for sexual and reproductive rights at the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC). ACPD works to ensure that sexual and reproductive health and rights are included in future development agendas. ACPD also works to ensure that the requisite political will is put forward to hold states accountable for the obligations that they undertook at these world conferences. ACPD does this by creating reports, interacting with diplomats, and holding side conferences regarding sexual and reproductive rights at the UN HRC, including a conference held in June 2012 on Criminal Laws and Women’s Right to Health. 

During my internship at ACPD, I conducted research on and wrote about a variety of sexual and reproductive health and rights issues, including access to safe and timely abortion services, access to contraception, family planning, youth rights, sexual orientation and gender identity rights, and the criminalization of HIV transmission. I also created advocacy tools and drafted an advocacy report that will be used to promote the inclusion of sexual and reproductive rights in future international development agendas.

My work with ACPD reinforced for me the importance of protecting sexual and reproductive health and rights. These rights and access to health services are essential for people, particularly women, to fully realize theirhumanrights.Improvingaccesstosuch services will not only provide immediate health benefits by reducing mother and child mortality and sexually transmitted infections, but it will also empower women and couples to decide freely on the number and spacing of their children. This will improve standards of living, slow population growth and promote the full and active participation of women in economic, social and political life.

It is clear that the goals made to recognize and realize sexual and reproductive health at the ICPD, at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and the Millennium Summit will not be fully met by 2014 or 2015. Further, one major criticism of the MDGs was that they are not rights-based. States are not obliged to provide disaggregated data in terms of minority groups or poorer segments of their populations, and in some cases, they can meet MDG targets without improving the situation of these populations at all. Hence, the needs of the most vulnerable segments of populations are often not adequately addressed. It is my hope that the report I created will communicate the importance of sexual and reproductive health and rights, as well as the necessity of taking a human rights-based approach that focuses on the needs of all segments of populations.

My internship provided me with an amazing opportunity to learn more about international law and how the UN system actually operates, from the treaty monitoring bodies to the inner politics of the HRC. It was an incredibly rewarding experience which immersed me in the practice of international human rights law. I am grateful to the IHRP, the Students’ Law Society and ACPD for providing me with this opportunity.