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PRESS
RELEASE
United Nations Population
Fund
Contact in New York:
Alex Marshall
Fax: (212)
557-6416
William
Ryan
Abubakar Dungus
Reproductive
Rights
Need to be Secured in
Practice, Panel Told
KAMPALA, Uganda, 25 June--Reproductive freedom
and the right to reproductive health care are internationally
recognized human rights, but they must be secured through
legislation and political activism, according to speakers on the
final day of an international conference here on reproductive rights
and health.
Those views were expressed as conferees heard two presentations
on how to create the conditions necessary for realizing those rights
as the Expert Round-table Meeting on Ensuring Reproductive Rights
and Implementing Sexual and Reproductive Health Programmes,
Including Women's Empowerment, Male Involvement and Human Rights
began its final day on Thursday morning.
The meeting also began considering reports by the four working
groups on the round table’s themes: policies for sexual and
reproductive health; designing quality sexual and reproductive
health services; access to services; and creating the conditions for
implementing sexual and reproductive health and rights.
About fifty experts and observers from around the world attended
the round table. The UNFPA-organized event at the International
Conference Centre here was part of ICPD+5, a year-long evaluation of
progress in the five years since the 1994 International Conference
on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo.
Anika Rahman, Director of the International Programme of the New
York-based Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, spoke on
"reproductive health as a human right: gender equality and women’s
empowerment". She started by explaining the legal foundation for
reproductive rights in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and
other human rights instruments adopted by the international
community since 1945.
Those treaties and conventions oblige governments to ensure that
their citizens enjoy their rights. They can be used as instruments
of advocacy and as frameworks for activism. Realizing reproductive
rights in practice, she said, calls for disseminating information
about those rights, building a culture of rights in each country,
and developing indicators for monitoring their implementation.
In addition to the right to reproductive health care, Ms. Rahman
said, reproductive rights include reproductive self-determination,
which encompasses several rights explicitly guaranteed in
international conventions: the right to decide the number and
spacing of children, the right to marry and to found a family, the
right not to be subjected to torture or other cruel inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment; the right to modify customs that
discriminate against women; the right to be free from sexual assault
and exploitation; the right to privacy; the right to life, liberty
and security; the right to enjoy scientific progress and to consent
to experimentation; and the right to be free from gender
discrimination. Each of these rights has specific applications in
the reproductive health context.
Advocacy tools useful in attaining reproductive rights, she said,
include lobbying for legal and/or policy reforms; court actions or
litigation; educating policy makers and the public; building
coalitions and global networks for promoting change; mobilizing
people; and negotiating with public institutions, including
donors.
Before embarking on lobbying efforts or court actions, she
continued, advocates must first examine existing laws and how they
are interpreted and enforced; and consider whether the public is
aware of them. Where further action is required, it is often easier
to push for changes in policy rather than laws, since lobbying
legislators sometimes requires more time and resources.
The process should be inclusive, she stated. "Lawyers are not the
only ones qualified to engage in advocacy."
Barbara Klugman, coordinator of the Women’s Health Project at the
University of the Witwatersrand, then reported on the gains made in
legislating and implementing reproductive rights in South Africa
since the end of apartheid. This progress includes the country’s new
constitution, which contains explicit provisions for equality,
health care and sexual and reproductive rights; its newly adopted
population policy; and the Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1997.
Ms. Klugman described some of the actions undertaken to bring
about those changes, and proposed lessons that could be learned from
them. First, she said activists should understand the concerns of
politicians who can ensure policy change, and then work to convince
them that supporting the desired change will help their careers and
their constituents. Second, activists must counter misinformation
spread by opponents of reproductive rights. In South Africa, for
example, advocates for the Termination of Pregnancy Act discredited
their opposition by showing it was funded by right-wing political
forces outside the country.
Mobilizing mass organizations and getting key members of the
public to speak on the issue strengthens advocates’ campaigns, she
continued. It is also useful to publicize individual testimonies of
real-life experiences, reminding politicians that the questions at
hand affect the lives of their constituents. Advocates should also
obtain the support of international donors, she suggested.
The presentations of technical papers were followed by
discussions. Participants later broke into four working groups for
more detailed deliberations. "The working groups are the forum where
participants are discussing the central issues of this round table
and formulating strategies, taking the speakers’ presentations into
consideration," said the Director of the Technical and Policy
Division, Mohammed Nizamuddin.
The groups are important because "they bring together a wealth of
expertise on quality of reproductive health care, accessibility of
services and reproductive rights " said the round table’s general
rapporteur, Sunetra Puri. The experts will "assess constraints and
formulate forward-looking strategies on those themes," she
added.
The round table will end with the adoption of recommendations on
key future actions, which will be inputs to The Hague Forum on
ICPD+5, in February 1999, and to the June-July 1999 special session
of the United Nations General Assembly concluding the review
process. |