Ipas urges the world to recognize health as a human right on International Human Rights Day

Human rights are internationally recognized civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights that apply to all individuals.

Photo courtesy of Panos Pictures.

Ipas joins the global community today in celebrating International Human Rights Day, which commemorates the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the U.N. General Assembly on December 10, 1948.

Human rights are internationally recognized civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights that apply to all individuals. Through a series of human-rights declarations, treaties and conventions, signatory governments are legally bound to respect, protect and fulfill these rights, which are indivisible, inalienable and universal. Human rights include both freedoms and entitlements.

In the decades that followed the initial declaration, a global consensus surrounding women's right to reproductive health evolved. By the mid-1990s, it was reflected in numerous international agreements, including those approved at the 1994 International Conference of Population and Development in Cairo and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, as well as at their five-year review sessions. At these conferences, governments from around the world agreed that reproductive rights are fundamental human rights.

Everyone has the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. States should take all appropriate measures to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, universal access to health-care services, including those related to reproductive health care, which includes family planning and sexual health. Reproductive health-care programmes should provide the widest range of services without any form of coercion. All couples and individuals have the basic right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have the information, education and means to do so.
- (Principle 8, Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, Cairo, 1994)

The right to reproductive health in particular is not fully realized for women in many parts of the world. Every year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly 70,000 women die needlessly from unsafe abortions and countless others are injured, often permanently. Unsafe abortion is a nearly universal experience for women in developing countries, a broad denial of their right to health as well as a dire public-health issue. Furthermore, many women decide to end their pregnancies because they did not have access to the means to prevent them: 137 million women around the world would like to use birth control, but can’t. The WHO estimates that close to 50% of women in sub-Saharan Africa who would like to control their fertility do not have access to contraception.

Restricting women’s control over their own reproductive decisionmaking and limiting their access to comprehensive reproductive health-care services denies them their full human rights. Alongside caring, committed health professions and other colleagues worldwide, Ipas has worked for three decades to increase women's ability to exercise their rights to reproductive health and freedom through training, research, advocacy, distribution of equipment and supplies for reproductive-health care, and information dissemination.

For more information, contact:
Kirsten Sherk
Senior Associate, Media Relations
e-mail: sherkk@ipas.org
phone: 919.960.5612
fax: 919.929.0258