Gender Norms and Power Inequities: Key Barriers to Realizing Sexual and Reproductive Rights

Guest post by Christina Wegs, Senior Advisor for Global Policy and Advocacy, CARE

December 10th was International Human Rights Day. This day commemorates the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the UN General Assembly in 1948, which affirmed the rights of all people, everywhere and all the time. The Declaration, as well as similar international treaties and agreements, confirm the centrality and importance of protecting and fulfilling sexual and reproductive rights (SRR). Embraced within the concept of SRR is the right to reproductive self-determination; the right to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information, education, and services; the right to the highest attainable standard of health; and the right to equality and non-discrimination.

Despite international recognition of the importance of SRR, sixty years on and twenty years after the International Conference on Population and Development, women and girls in every part of the world continue to face considerable barriers to realizing their SRR. In many places, unmarried women and adolescents are denied access to reproductive health information and services, many women are not able to exercise full, free, and informed contraceptive choice, and women continue to die from preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth. Pervasive gender inequality limits women’s decision-making autonomy and undermines their health and well-being throughout their lives. Finally, many women—especially poor and socially marginalized women—continue to experience systemic discrimination in health care, which not only results in poor quality of care and poor health outcomes, but also acts as a powerful disincentive to women seeking care.

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Getting Real on Rights: Experience from Two Country Consultations on Applying a Rights-Based Approach to Family Planning Programming

Guest post by Shannon Harris

Given the many challenges that countries face in providing family planning (FP) services, how can a client-centered, rights-based approach to programming help governments meet their obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill clients’ rights to meet their reproductive needs and desires? This question framed two recent country consultations in India and Kenya to explore the feasibility and desirability of applying the voluntary, rights-based FP (VRBFP) conceptual framework. Were country-level FP stakeholders—program managers, policymakers, and providers—even interested in such an approach?

With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Futures Group and EngenderHealth partnered with the Population Foundation of India and the National Council for Population and Development in Kenya to host national and regional stakeholder consultations, as well as conduct FP site visits to explore these questions. Despite diverse cultural, policy and program environments, stakeholders in both countries expressed tremendous interest in using a rights-based approach. Stakeholders found the program vision described in the VRBFP framework appealing and relevant to their programs because of its emphasis on the individuals and communities served by the FP program, while simultaneously acknowledging the importance of the policy environment and supply-side factors.

Photo by H. Connor/EngenderHealth

Members of the Futures Group/EngenderHealth rights framework team visit a community motivator in India’s Bihar State to identify the realities and challenges related to protecting and fulfilling human rights in FP at the community level—specifically to identify the conditions and practices that either uphold or violate human rights. (Photo by H. Connor/EngenderHealth)

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