Aimed at policymakers, donors and practitioners working in health and beyond, this Eldis Health key issues guide reviews current policy issues and explores cutting-edge debates relating to sexual and reproductive health and rights. It also highlights current and future challenges for attaining greater levels of sexual and reproductive well-being, and considers the role of innovative technologies and approaches in achieving sexual and reproductive health and rights for all.
Values, Policies and Rights
Sexual and reproductive health and rights
Eldis health key issues
The Health Rights of Women Assessment Instrument (HeRWAI)
Source : PHA-Exchange
The Health Rights of Women Assessment Instrument (HeRWAI) is a strategic tool to enhance lobbying activities for better implementation of women's health rights. It can be used as a tool to analyse a wide range of policies, including those impacting but not directly addressing health issues. A HeRWAI analysis links what actually happens with what should happen according to the human rights obligations of a country. It examines local, national and international influences. The HeRWAI analysis consists of six steps, which analyse a policy that influences women's health rights. Each step consists of information and questions to guide the analysis.
End human rights violations against people with mental health disorders
WHO media release
The World Health Organization (WHO) dedicated International Human Rights Day, 10 December, to people with mental disorders and the all-too-prevalent violations of their basic human rights. People with mental disorders face an alarming range of human rights abuses in countries throughout the world, yet there are proven ways to dramatically improve the situation. Misunderstanding and stigma surrounding mental ill health are widespread. Despite the existence of effective treatments for mental disorders, there is a belief that they are untreatable or that people with mental disorders are difficult, not intelligent, or incapable of making decisions.
Integrating Equity into Health Information Systems: A Human Rights Approach to Health and Information
Bambas L (2005) Integrating Equity into Health Information Systems: A Human Rights Approach to Health and Information. PLoS Med 2(4): e102
One of the most fundamental human rights is the assumption that each person matters, and everyone deserves to be treated with dignity—this is the tenet from which all other human rights flow. Another is that those who are most vulnerable deserve special protection. However, in many developing countries, vast numbers of children are born but never counted, and their health and welfare throughout their lives remains unknown. And because single-mean measures of population health mask inequalities among the best-off and worst-off, the health of vulnerable populations is not effectively documented and acknowledged. Health information systems can play an important role in supporting these rights by documenting and tracking health and health inequities, and by creating a platform for action and accountability.
A Human Rights Approach to Health and Information
Bambas L (2005) Integrating Equity into Health Information Systems: A Human Rights Approach to Health and Information. PLoS Med 2(4): e102
One of the most fundamental human rights is the assumption that each person matters, and everyone deserves to be treated with dignity—this is the tenet from which all other human rights flow. Another is that those who are most vulnerable deserve special protection. However, in many developing countries, vast numbers of children are born but never counted, and their health and welfare throughout their lives remains unknown. And because single-mean measures of population health mask inequalities among the best-off and worst-off, the health of vulnerable populations is not effectively documented and acknowledged. Health information systems can play an important role in supporting these rights by documenting and tracking health and health inequities, and by creating a platform for action and accountability.
Africa's Push for Reproductive Rights Fund Rubs U.S. the Wrong Way
Africa Women and Child Feature Service via allafrica.com
A number of African gender advocates in both government and civil society have put up spirited fight to have the United Nations create a Fund to address millennium development goal issues of reproductive health and gender empowerment. To be known as the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Fund, resources channelled to this Fund are to be used to lower the high maternal and child mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa and ensure gender empowerment and environmental goals are implemented with speed. But the United States, especially the Bush Administration and other pro-life advocates, are said not to be warming up to the idea, which they see as coded attempts to fund abortion related issues and increase procurement of condoms.
Sexual and reproductive health and rights: a cornerstone of development
Sida/Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), 2005
In this paper, the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (Sida) sets out its policy on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). It argues that violations of the right to sexual and reproductive health both cause and are caused by poverty. Therefore, realising SRHR is not only a goal in itself, but a means to fight poverty, underpinning all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The paper considers sexual and reproductive health from the perspective of human rights and of the poor, emphasising the need to address power structures and their impacts.
Discussing the theory of human rights
Philosophy & Public Affairs, Volume 32 Issue 4
"Few concepts are as frequently invoked in contemporary political discussions as human rights. There is something deeply attractive in the idea that every person anywhere in the world, irrespective of citizenship or territorial legislation, has some basic rights, which others should respect. The moral appeal of human rights has been used for a variety of purposes, from resisting torture and arbitrary incarceration to demanding the end of hunger and of medical neglect. At the same time, the central idea of human rights as something that people have, and have even without any specific legislation, is seen by many as foundationally dubious and lacking in cogency."
The Initiative for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Health Sector Reforms
The Initiative for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Health Sector Reforms is an international research, capacity building and advocacy project (also known as the Rights and Reforms Initiative). It aims to promote health sector reforms that are conducive to implementing the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development's (ICPD) Programme of Action, are driven by in-country actors, and are responsive to the needs of the people of the country, especially poor women. The main purpose of the Initiative is to strengthen understanding amongst activists and decision-makers of the role of global social and economic changes and specifically of health sector reforms (HSR) in facilitating or undermining efforts to achieve sexual and reproductive rights in health policies and programmes.
Further details: /newsletter/id/31102
Health systems and achieving the MDGs
Lynn Freedman argues in the journal Development that achieving the MDGs will require massive new investment in the health sector but also notes that success is not only about money but also the way in which the connection between health and development is constructed. She writes: "This is the hidden opportunity of the MDGs: With health recognized as a central part of a wider development agenda, we have a chance to push past the conventional target-based public health approach and to re-ground health policy in the most critical debates of the day, including globalization, human security, equity, human rights, and poverty reduction."