The Center is proud to be a co-founder and host of the newly created International Initiative on Maternal Mortality and Human Rights. Launched at the Women Deliver conference in late 2007, the Initiative is a civil society effort whose goal is to address maternal mortality as a human rights imperative. It combines advocacy, policy work, and other strategies to ensure that governments implement effective and equitable policies and programs to reduce maternal mortality. The Initiative also promotes understanding among human right organizations and bodies that maternal deaths can be as much a human rights violation as extrajudicial executions, torture, and arbitrary detentions.

"This Initiative is unique," said Paul Hunt, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health. "Never before have such diverse organizations with different perspectives joined together to use human rights in the struggle against maternal mortality. The Initiative reflects the growing maturity of the health and human rights movement. It is an Initiative of the twenty-first century."

The Initiative's steering committee consists of the following organizations:

• Averting Maternal Death and Disability Program, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
• CARE
• Center for Justice and International Law
• Center for Reproductive Rights
• Equinet, the Regional Network on Equity in Health in Southern Africa
• Family Care International
• Health Equity Group (consisting of Women's Dignity, Youth Action Volunteers, and the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme)
• Human Rights Centre, University of Essex
• International Budget Project
• Kvinna till Kvinna
• Linangan ng Kababaihan (Likhaan)
• Physicians for Human Rights
• Sahayog

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Reproductive rights include the right to choose to become pregnant and give birth without fear of death and disability. Under binding international human rights norms, women are entitled to the health care and counseling they need to survive pregnancy and childbirth without incurring serious illness or injury.

Every year, at least 529,000 women die from complications stemming from pregnancy and childbirth. The vast majority of these maternal deaths occur among the world's poorest women. These deaths are attributable not only to failings in health care systems, but also to entrenched patterns of discrimination against women.

Governments can take the following steps to promote safe pregnancy:

• Work to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women, including violence against women and harmful practices affecting women's health.
• Ensure appropriate antenatal, delivery and postpartum care to all women.
• Repeal laws that prohibit health care procedures that only women need, including safe abortion procedures.
• Cease discriminatory practices in public health care facilities, including requirements for spousal consent prior to accessing services.
• Ensure access to family planning services and information to all women and adolescents of reproductive age.

All women are entitled to the conditions necessary to enjoy safe and healthy pregnancies and childbirth. Whether a woman has access to these conditions is largely a matter of government commitment.

Articles and Briefing Papers:

• Surviving Pregnancy and Childbirth: An International Human Right
• Pregnant Women Living with HIV/AIDS: Protecting Human Rights in Programs to Prevent Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV (PDF)
  Also available in Spanish

• Maternal Health: Implications for Children and Adolescents (PDF)