Thank you.
ACPD is a human rights advocacy organization, which focuses primarily on women's rights and sexual and reproductive rights.
Around the world in the past year there has been unprecedented global attention on the issue of maternal mortality as both a health issue and a human rights issue. While a woman in Canada has a one in 11,000 chance of dying from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, in Niger, pregnancy-related causes will kill one in seven women. This injustice and inequity underscores the seriousness of these human rights violations. It is the underlying reason why industrialized states like Canada must do more.
So let's begin by talking about what these industrialized states have already agreed to do.
The millennium development goals, or MDGs, include a global promise to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters by 2015 and to achieve universal access to reproductive health by the same date. In September, world leaders will gather to review progress on the achievement of the MDGs. In light of this meeting, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon announced a joint action plan in April to accelerate progress on maternal and newborn health.
The MDGs are not new. In 1994, at the International Conference on Population and Development, 179 governments, including Canada, committed to provide by 2015 universal access to a full range of safe and reliable family planning methods and to related reproductive health services that are not against the law, thereby referring to abortion services. These commitments have been further fleshed out by human rights experts within the UN system. In recent years, the right to survive pregnancy and childbirth has increasingly been recognized as a basic human right. According to human rights experts, avoidable maternal mortality violates women's right to life, health, equality, and non-discrimination. Several UN treaty-monitoring bodies have found violations of key human rights treaties where states have failed to take measures to prevent maternal mortality.
In 2006, African leaders, without exception, adopted the Maputo plan of action on sexual and reproductive health and rights, which, among other strategies, mandates their health systems to provide safe abortion services to the fullest extent of the law. All African states permit abortion under at least some circumstances. And in April of this year, the African Union convened a continental conference to accelerate progress on maternal and child health, showing their commitment to this very important issue.
As you well know, Canada also committed to deliver its foreign aid in accordance with the ODA accountability act. It requires all aspects of Canadian aid to focus on poverty reduction and it requires that the perspectives and concerns of those who receive ODA be taken into account, hence the Maputo plan of action. Canadian aid and all decision-making related to it, including the maternal and child health initiative, must be consistent with, among other factors, international human rights standards.
Let's talk about those standards developed by the experts that interpret international human rights treaties and develop the international standards or state obligations that states are required to follow. They include affordable and comprehensive reproductive health care services, including: family planning services; programs geared to increasing knowledge about and access to contraceptives as well as safe abortion services in accordance with local laws; measures to eliminate unintended pregnancy and unsafe abortion; dissemination of reproductive health and family planning information; guaranteed access to emergency obstetric care; ensuring that births are attended by trained personnel; and that quality emergency care for complications from unsafe abortion is available to all women.
Last June, the Human Rights Council at the UN adopted a landmark resolution recognizing maternal mortality and morbidity as a pressing human rights concern. With this resolution, which Canada co-sponsored, member states acknowledged that the issue of maternal health must be recognized as a human rights challenge and that efforts to curb the unacceptably high global rates of preventable maternal mortality and morbidity must be urgently intensified and broadened.
On June 2—one year ago tomorrow—Parliament passed an all-party resolution to reduce maternal and newborn morbidity and mortality, both at home and abroad, including through the G-8 and other global initiatives.
Then, last year, at the G-8 in Italy, the G-8 heads of government, including Canada, agreed that maternal and child health was one of the world's most pressing global health problems. They committed to accelerate progress on maternal health, including through sexual and reproductive health care and services, and voluntary family planning.
Last Thursday, Minister Oda appeared before the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. In her testimony she quoted parts of paragraph 8.25 of the Programme of Action adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development.
The two quotes she used were: “In no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning.” She went on to quote: “Prevention of unwanted pregnancies must always be given the highest priority.” She then said: “That is the action plan that we are following. That's the action plan that the UNFPA has based their definition [on], as have other world United Nations agencies.” However, Minister Oda neglected to quote from the rest of the paragraph. It talks about the need “to deal with the health impact of unsafe abortion...as a major public health concern”. Governments are urged “to reduce the recourse to abortion through expanded and improved family-planning services” and to ensure that women who have unintended pregnancies “have ready access to reliable information and compassionate counselling”.
It also says that any measures or changes related to abortion must be determined through legislative processes, thereby begging the question why they should be changed through Canadian foreign aid policy. It also requires that where abortion is not against the law, it should be safe, and that in all cases women should have access to quality services for complications arising from abortion.
If the government is relying on paragraph 8.25 of the Programme of Action, which seems to be the case, it should rely on the entire paragraph, not just the part of the sentence it likes. The government cannot cherry-pick.
Let's look at what we might want from this G-8. If this government is relying on UN definitions of reproductive health, it cannot choose which part of which paragraph it wants to rely on for its programming. This government must base its programming on the ODA accountability act and on international human rights standards. This government must base its programming on the evidence that family planning saves lives and that safe abortion must be provided where it is legal, and in all cases services must be provided for the estimated eight million women, every year, who suffer from the complications arising from unsafe abortion.
Thank you.