Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the opportunity to present before this committee.
Around the world this 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 underscore the seriousness of these human rights violations. It is the underlying reason why industrialized nations such as our own must do more.
So let's begin by talking about what those industrialized nations have already agreed to do. The 2000 millennium development goals, or MDGs, included a global promise to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters by 2015 and to achieve universal access to reproductive health by the same year. Unfortunately, as noted by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, this is the goal to which the least progress has been made by governments, so it is unlikely to be met. In September, as we've heard, world leaders will gather to review progress on the achievement of the MDGs. Overall levels of maternal mortality have barely changed over the past 20 years, although it is anticipated with new data recently released and the new UN estimates that we will see some signs of progress, which indeed will be encouraging.
But the MDGs were nothing new. In 1994, at the International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo, 179 governments, including Canada, committed to provide by 2015 universal access to reproductive health, to a full range of safe and reliable family planning methods, and to related reproductive health services that are not against the law. These commitments have been further fleshed out by international human rights experts. 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 rights 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 the health system to provide safe abortion services to the fullest extent of the law. While it may not be common knowledge, it is true that all African states permit abortion under some circumstances. Indeed on April 19 to 21 of this year, the African Union convened a continental conference to celebrate progress on maternal and child health.
Canada has 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 requires that the perspectives and concerns of the poor be taken into account in the delivery of that aid. Canadian aid and all the decision-making related to it must be consistent with six principles; these are, Canadian values, foreign policy, sustainable development, aid effectiveness, the promotion of democracy, and the promotion of international human rights standards.
What are the international human rights standards related to maternal mortality and morbidity? The human rights experts who sit on these treaty monitoring committees have interpreted their respective international treaties as requiring states to provide a whole host of obligations. These 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; dissemination of reproductive health and family planning information; guaranteed access to emergency obstetric care, and ensuring that births are attended by trained personnel and that quality emergency care is available for complications from unsafe abortions. These human rights experts have linked maternal deaths and ill health to a failure to provide these services. In other words, the states in question, if they're not providing the services, are actually violating human rights.
In June 2009 the Human Rights Council of 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 acknowledge 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. It is the first intergovernmental acknowledgement of maternal mortality as a human rights issue.
Not even one month later, in July 2009, at the meeting of the G-8 in Italy, the G-8 heads of government 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”. They also announced, and I quote, support for “building a global consensus on maternal, newborn and child health as a way to accelerate progress on the Millennium Development Goals for both maternal and child health”.
It is encouraging that after years of neglect, governments are increasingly speaking out against this tragedy, but the question remains: how do we turn these words into actions? Of course, in June, the leaders of the G-8 countries will gather in Huntsville for their 36th annual summit. As well, of course, a G-8 and G-20 summit, which is co-hosted with South Korea, will take place at the same time.
The Muskoka summit comes at a critical time. The world's most powerful heads of state will need to address international development as we enter the final period for delivering on the MDGs. The summit will follow unprecedented global attention to maternal, newborn, and child health. Momentum has never been greater to accelerate progress in this crucial area.
So let's look at what we might want from our government and other heads of state from this G-8. One, we want governments to live up to and build on past commitments. The past commitments include last year's G-8; efforts to ramp up to achieve the MDGs; we want governments to meet the commitments they made in Cairo in 1994 and at subsequent UN reviews; we want to make sure that the maternal and child health initiative lives up to the promises made in the ODA Accountability Act and is based on evidence of what works and what is effective; we want to make sure there is enough money to do all of this; and I think we should call on our government to make a plan to reach 0.7% of gross national income relative to ODA.
Thank you.