A group of United Nations human rights experts have called on States across the world to repeal restrictive abortion laws and policies, and all punitive measures and discriminatory barriers to access safe reproductive health services.
The experts also expressed their support for the call of several non-governmental organisations to make 28 September an official UN day for safe abortion worldwide, to urge Governments to decriminalise abortion and provide reproductive health services in a legal, safe and affordable manner.
Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women
The Asia-Pacific is home to over a billion people between the ages of 10-24 but data on the incidence of induced abortion among this group are sparse, unrepresentative and incomplete, especially with respect to unmarried women. Estimates in Asia using national/subnational data range from 1-15% of all abortions; micro studies indicate much higher proportions. On the other hand, except for Australia and New Zealand, Pacific data are unavailable.
In most parts of the Asia-Pacific, the majority of young abortion seekers are unmarried. In South Asia, where 32% of 15-19 year olds are married and almost all women are married by age however, most unwanted pregnancies occur within marriage in the context of delaying a first birth or spacing a subsequent one. However, even in this subregion, incidence of pregnancies among unmarried teenagers is on the rise, especially in urban areas.
This annual publication from the Center for Reproductive Rights summarizes the jurisprudence from United Nations treaty monitoring bodies on reproductive rights, particularly the standards on maternal health care, abortion, and contraception.
It is intended to provide treaty body experts and human rights advocates with succinct, accessible information on the standards being adopted across treaty monitoring bodies surrounding these important rights.
Updated annually to reflect trends in reproductive rights, this is the second edition of this publication.
This is the second report by Catholics for Choice at the World Congress of Families, 2009. The World Congress of Families is a US-based right-wing religious initiative that exports homophobia and sexism globally. The report offers a run-through of the day’s events, a summary of the day’s speeches, and highlights anti-rights discourses and misinformation proffered by speakers.
In this report, Catholics for Choice provide short introductory passages on selected speakers for the 2013 World Congress of Families. This document serves to highlight those speakers holding extreme and/or anti-rights opinions, as well as those who support homophobic, sexist, and fundamentalist ideologies.
Religion Counts produced this 2002 report, which focuses on the impact of religion, religious ideologies, and religious groups on and within the United Nations system. Using the Beijing+5 meeting as a case study to analyze how conservative voices influenced the meeting, the report shows that despite the presence and influence of religion in the UN system, there is no singular, unified religious voice or opinion, and propounds the idea that religion can be used to secure and fight for human rights. It carefully outlines the role religious groups play in the UN, the strategies they employ, how policies are shaped by these groups, how interfaith efforts are being made, and what one can expect from religious groups in the UN system in the future.
This report outlines the impact of the Vatican on health and family policies, studies the internal organs of the Vatican dealing with family, health, and gender issues (such as “defence of the family” and anti-abortion issues), and introduces the Vatican’s diplomatic corps, relations with ecclesial organizations, and their activities in the UN and other channels. The report analyzes the strategies used by these organs to shape issues globally through pressure, influence, and arguments rooted in conservatism.
Catholics for Choice outlines their expectations for the 2012 World Congress of Families in this brief report. It provides a background on agendas at previous congresses, lists breakout sessions, and critically analyses speakers and attendance as well as homophobic and regressive views to be discussed at the congress.
This report chronicles the third day of the 2013 World Congress of Families in Sydney. It provides an outline of the day’s events, the issues that were brought up by speakers and panelists, and the issues that were avoided or left out by the program. It criticizes the event’s homophobia, anti-choice narratives, and parochial gender ideologies in the programs and concludes with an overall evaluation of the congress.
This General Comment at the 39th session of the Human Rights Committee in 1990 calls for all states to ensure their laws relating to family adhere to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and prohibit forced and underage marriages, permit divorce, ensure family planning practices are non-discriminatory, ensure the equality of responsibilities and rights between genders in families, and prevent gendered discrimination in families.
