The complications of unsafe, illegal abortions are a significant cause of maternal mortality in Botswana. The stigma attached to abortion leads some women to seek clandestine procedures, or alternatively, to carry the fetus to term and abandon the infant at birth. The author reports in this paper on research into perceptions of abortion in urban Botswana in order to understand the social and cultural obstacles to women’s reproductive autonomy, focusing particularly on attitudes to terminating a pregnancy. She carried out 21 interviews with female and male urban adult Batswana. The article presents a review of the abortion issue in Botswana based on the research. She notes that restrictive laws must eventually be abolished to allow women access to safe, timely abortions. The findings however, suggest that socio-cultural factors, not punitive laws, present the greatest barriers to women seeking to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. These factors must be addressed so that effective local solutions to unsafe abortion can be generated.
Values, Policies and Rights
The right to health is a fundamental human right which is recognized in international and regional human rights systems. The African Human Rights System is also duly recognized the right to health. Although recognizing the right in the human rights instrument is important, the meaningful protection of the right needs appropriate and consistent interpretation and adequate implementation mechanisms. This article scrutinizes the Justiciability and Enforcement of the right to health in the African Human Rights System. Based on analysis of relevant African Human Rights Instruments, literatures and cases of African Commission, the author argues that the justiciability of the right to health in African Human Rights System is upheld. Regarding its enforcement, the article argued that there are relevant institutional frameworks in African human rights systems and African political architecture. Hence, the enforcement of the right to health falls squarely in most of these institutions’ mandate.
There is growing dissatisfaction and even mistrust of human rights as an instrument for radical social change. The author argues that what is needed is a revolutionary approach to human rights informed by an analysis of the oppressive, anti-human social/historical context of national and global social relationships. For many social justice activists, moral contradictions in thye use of rights frameworks by both Western and non-Western states has created dissatisfaction and even mistrust of human rights as an instrument for radical social change. A “people-centered human rights” concept and approach has been developing, based on the communitarian principles of social solidarity, cooperation, non-discrimination in all social relationships, collective public ownership of the earth’s resources, respect for difference, self-determination of all peoples’ and the recognition and respect for the inherent dignity of all individuals and people’s.
The WHO Executive Board meeting in Geneva in Jan 2014 will consider a proposal from Finland (see EB134/1 Add.1) entitled: “Contributing to social and economic development: sustainable action across sectors to improve health and health equity” which is a follow up from the 8th Global Health Promotion Conference in Helsinki in June 2013. Finland has requested the inclusion of a new agenda item for the 134th session
of the Executive Board. It will provide an opportunity for the Board to have a debate, adopt a recommendation for an Assembly resolution calling for concrete steps forward, carried out within existing resources, and expressing the importance of actions across sectors for health and health equity in the final efforts to achieve the MDGs and in the debate on the post-2015 development agenda.
In this blog Thandika Mkandawire writes about the role Nelson Mandela played in inspiring his generation of political activists.He writes that if the life imprisonment of Mandela seemed like a major reversal for African nationalism and a victory for the remaining racist and fascist regimes, Mandela's statement at the dock of the court on 20 April 1964 was one the most inspiring statements for his generation: “This is the struggle of the African people, inspired by their own suffering and experience. It is a struggle for the right to live. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society, in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunity. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and achieve. But, if needs be, my Lord, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” Mkandawire writes that four things strike him as to why the man is the most admired among Africans. One was Mandela's deep commitment to the liberation of the African people. A second was Mandela’s deep sense of duty and a warm sense of respect for the people he led and the movement to which he had been of selfless service. The third feature was Mandela’s eminently sane relationship to power and his contribution by example in his own exercise of power. The fourth was his commitment to democracy and rule of law.
The process of mythologizing represents a contestation between symbolism and mythology, writes Firoze Manji. The greatest disservice that we could pay to Mandela is to allow the complexity, courage and humanity of his long life to be reduced to a fairy tale. Mandela represents for so many the finest values of courage, liberation and freedom.
Kofi Annan speaks with the unhurried, temperate tone of someone confident of being listened to. Last week the former UN secretary-general met his match, however, in the form of hundreds of Sowetan schoolchildren blowing vuvuzelas in a football stadium. "Silence please," Annan was forced to plea as his speech was interrupted, something that can rarely have happened to him at the UN general assembly or even mediating in Syria.
Annan warned the audience drawn from 190 countries that the benefits of globalisation have not been shared fairly and the gap between rich and poor is unsustainable. It is a theme that he shares further on in this interview with the Guardian. There must be greater accountability and transparency, he says, to ensure Africa's vast natural resources benefit all its people.
As a means of enforcing the justiciability of the right to health, on 3 March 2011, Petition Number 16 of 2011 on cases of maternal mortality was filed in Uganda’s Constitutional Court by the Centre for Health, Human Rights and Development (CEHURD) and others. This case argued, among others, that by not providing essential health services and commodities for pregnant women and their new-borns, Government was violating fundamental human rights guaranteed in the Constitution, including the right to health, the right to life, and the rights of women. However, court dismissed the case on grounds that the the constitutional court had no power to determine the matter. CEHURD appealed to the Supreme Court asserting that the petition was fully with in the mandate of the constitutional court. The hearing could not however be started because the government was not represented in court at the first hearing of the Appeal leading to its postponement.
This document presents the decisions and declarations of Extraordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union 12 October 2013 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Following a week of intense negotiations, the Addis Ababa Declaration on Population and Development in Africa beyond 2014 was adopted on Friday, October 4, at the conclusion of the Ministerial Segment of the African Regional Conference on Population and Development. The declaration contains strong commitments by African States on sexual and reproductive health and rights. It calls for universal access to sexual and reproductive health information and services, with particular attention to the needs of adolescents, as well as emergency contraception, comprehensive sexuality education and critical services for survivors of violence against women and girls. It does not, however, call explicitly for the elimination of discrimination and violence in Africa based on sexual orientation and gender identity. At the press conference, the Task Force condemned the violence and discrimination endured by women and men in Africa based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.