Reproductive Health And Human Rights

The concept of reproductive health promises to play a crucial role in improving women's health and rights around the world. It was internationally endorsed by a United Nations conference in 1994, but remains controversial because of the challenge it presents to conservative agencies: it challenges policies of suppressing public discussion on human sexuality and regulating its private expressions. Reproductive Health and Human Rights is designed to equip healthcare providers and administrators to integrate ethical, legal, and human rights principles in protection and promotion of reproductive health, and to inform lawyers and women's health advocates about aspects of medicine and healthcare systems that affect reproduction. Rebecca Cook, Bernard Dickens, and Mahmoud Fathalla, leading international authorities on reproductive medicine, human rights, medical law, and bioethics, integrate their disciplines to provide an accessible but comprehensive introduction to reproductive and sexual health. They analyse fifteen case-studies of recurrent problems, focusing particularly on resource-poor settings. Approaches to resolution are considered at clinical and health system levels. They also consider kinds of social change that would relieve the underlying conditions of reproductive health dilemmas. Supporting the explanatory chapters and case-studies are extensive resources of epidemiological data, human rights documents, and research materials and websites on reproductive and sexual health. In explaining ethics, law, and human rights to healthcare providers and administrators, and reproductive health to lawyers and women's health advocates, the authors explore and illustrate limitations and dysfunctions of prevailing health systems and their legal regulation, but also propose opportunities for reform. They draw on the values and principles of ethics and human rights recognized in national and international legal systems, to guide healthcare providers and administrators, lawyers, governments, and national and international agencies and legal tribunals. Reproductive Health and Human Rights will be an invaluable resource for all those working to improve services and legal protection for women around the world. Updates to this book, and information on translations to French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and Arabic are now available at www.law.utoronto.ca/faculty/cook/ReproductiveHealth.html

This report demonstrates the relationship between sexual health, human rights and the law. Drawing from a review of public health evidence and extensive research into human rights law at international, regional and national levels, the report shows how states in different parts of the world can and do support sexual health through legal and other mechanisms that are consistent with human rights standards and their own human rights obligations.

These WHO guidelines provide recommendations for programmes as to how they can ensure that human rights are respected, protected and fulfilled, while services are scaled up to reduce unmet need for contraception. Both health data and international human rights laws and treaties were incorporated into the guidance. This guidance is complementary to existing WHO recommendations for sexual and reproductive health programmes, including guidance on family planning, maternal and newborn health, safe abortion, and core competencies for primary health care.

Strengthening the protection of sexual and reproductive health and rights in the African region through human rights uses rights-based frameworks to address some of the serious sexual and reproductive health challenges that the African region is currently facing. More importantly, the book provides insightful human rights approaches on how these challenges can be overcome. The book is the first of its kind. It is an important addition to the resources available to researchers, academics, policymakers, civil society organisations, human rights defenders, learners and other persons interested in the subject of sexual and reproductive health and rights as they apply to the African region. Human rights issues addressed by the book include: access to safe abortion and emergency obstetric care; HIV/AIDS; adolescent sexual health and rights; early marriage; and gender-based sexual violence.

Reproductive Health and Human Rights: The Way Forward critically reflects on the past fifteen years of international efforts aimed at improving health, alleviating poverty, diminishing gender inequality, and promoting human rights. The volume includes essays by leading scholars and practitioners that are centered on the 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and its resulting Programme of Action. ICPD, an agreement among 179 governments, UN agencies, and NGOs, was intended to shape population and development policy—reinterpreted and redefined as "reproductive health." More than a decade after the enthusiasm that accompanied ICPD, there is growing concern about its effectiveness in the context of global health and development. Reproductive Health and Human Rights addresses that concern. The book grapples with fundamental questions about the relationships among population, fertility decline, reproductive health, human rights, poverty alleviation, and development and assesses the various arguments—demographic, public health, human rights-based, and economic—for and against ICPD today. A number of the chapters address institutional challenges to ICPD and consider how the changing political, religious, academic, and disciplinary contexts matter. Other chapters engage operational and conceptual issues and whether ICPD has been able to move the reproductive health agenda forward on topics such as maternal mortality, abortion, HIV/AIDS, adolescents, reproductive technologies, and demography. Finally, several chapters examine how ICPD has been sidelined by emerging health and development agendas and what could be done in response. Unlike any book yet published, Reproductive Health and Human Rights: The Way Forward examines the state of the arguments for reproductive health and rights from a multidisciplinary perspective that provides policymakers, scholars, and activists with a better understanding of how reproductive health and rights have developed, their place in the global policy agenda, and how they might evolve most effectively in the future.

This book explores recent developments, constraints and opportunities relating to the advancement of sexual and reproductive health and rights in Africa. Despite many positive developments in relation to sexual and reproductive health in recent years, many Africans still encounter challenges, for instance in poor maternity services, living with HIV, and discrimination on the basis of age, gender, sexual orientation or identity. Covering topics such as abortion, gender identity, adolescent sexuality and homosexuality, the chapters in this book discuss the impact of culture, morality and social beliefs on the enjoyment of sexual and reproductive health and rights across the continent, particularly in relation to vulnerable and marginalized groups. The book also explores the role of litigation, national human rights institutions and regional human rights bodies in advancing the realization of sexual and reproductive health and rights in the region. Throughout, the contributions highlight the relevance of a rights-based framework in addressing topical and contentious issues on sexual and reproductive health and rights within Sub-Saharan Africa. This book will be of interest to researchers of sexuality, civil rights and health in Africa. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003175049, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

he starting point for this guideline is the point at which a woman has learnt that she is living with HIV and it therefore covers key issues for providing comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights-related services and support for women living with HIV. As women living with HIV face unique challenges and human rights violations related to their sexuality and reproduction within their families and communities as well as from the health-care institutions where they seek care particular emphasis is placed on the creation of an enabling environment to support more effective health interventions and better health outcomes. This guideline is meant to help countries to more effectively and efficiently plan develop and monitor programmes and services that promote gender equality and human rights and hence are more acceptable and appropriate for women living with HIV taking into account the national and local epidemiological context. It discusses implementation issues that health interventions and service delivery must address to achieve gender equality and support human rights.

7. AIDS and HIV