Return Index

Return

Geneva, April 15th, 2008

Women have not been absent from the UPR process: Their reproductive rights have.

Will the new UN review process improve human rights of women worldwide?

The Universal Periodic Review is a new mechanism to review progress, best practices and challenges in human rights created by the United Nations and implemented by its Human Rights Council.

Through this mechanism all countries are expected to present the compliance with its international human rights obligations.

From the 7th to the 23rd of April the first session of the Universal Periodic Review is taking place. Among the countries that are being reviewed are: Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Philippines, India and Poland. 

Even though this is a mechanism under construction and that could be evaluated thoroughly after four years, when all the countries have been reviewed, it is important to underline some of the gaps and progress that have been evident in this process regarding women’s rights and sexual diversity.

One of the advances to highlight in this process is the visibility of the discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation both through the questions made by the states as well as the presentations of the states under review. The incorporation of the issue of sexual orientation in this process, is being accomplished despite the attempts done by one state to oppose it.

At the same time, we want to recognize that some issues of women´s rights have been repeatedly addressed in the process of review, such as domestic and sexual violence, political participation and equality policies. Nevertheless, it is concerning the lack of mention of reproductive rights, including maternal mortality, which affect half a million women a year. During the review of countries such as India and Brazil that have high rates of maternal mortality, the issue was not raised neither by the states under review nor by any other country.

Even more, after the review of ten countries, included those who have high rates if unsafe abortions and where women face all kind of barriers to access legal abortion, only one question has been raised.

Additionally, we consider that the issues raised up until now regarding women’s rights, only partially express the inequality that women live all around the world. Issues such as access to land, housing, social security and unemployment have not been mentioned.

In relation to sexual diversity, we are concerned with the almost complete absence of any reference to the situation of human rights violations against transgender, transsexual and intersex persons.

We consider that this process has the potential of being a mechanism that could allow for a comprehensive review of the human rights situation in all countries of the world. In order to respond to these expectations, it is necessary that the States fully incorporate women´s rights, including reproductive rights, while guaranteeing a full and meaningful participation of civil society organizations in the whole UPR process.

Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir (Argentina)

Center for Reproductive Rights

CLADEM - Comité de América Latina y el Caribe para la Defensa delos Derechos dela Mujer (CLADEM)

INSGENAR - Instituto de Género, Derecho y Desarrollo – Argentina 

Polish Federation for Women and Family Planning

Red Latinoamericana de Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir

Sexual Rights Initiative: Action Canada for Population and Development (Canadá), CREA (India), INCREASE (Nigeria), MULABI Espacio Latinoamericano de Sexualidades y Derechos

Taller de Comunicación Mujer (Ecuador)

For additional comments or information, please contact:

Alejandra Sardá – alejandra@mulabi.org - +41 22 (0) 7624 64824

Susana Chiarotti – monitoreo@cladem.org

Wanda Nowicka: nwanda@federa.org.pl. +48 604 597 366