Rajat Khosla
Speeches:
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Guidelines on ensuring human rights in the provision of contraception services
Rajat Khosla WHO, Reproductive Health and Research, Geneva, Switzerland - khoslar@who.int
Unmet need for contraception remains high in many settings, and is highest among the most vulnerable in society: adolescents, the poor, those living in rural areas and urban slums, people living with HIV and internally displaced people. The latest estimates are that 222 million women have an unmet need for modern contraception, and the need is greatest where the risks of maternal mortality are highest. International and regional human rights treaties, national constitutions and laws provide guarantees specifically relating to access to contraceptive information and services.
In addition, over the past few decades, international, regional and national legislative and human rights bodies have increasingly applied human rights to contraceptive information and services. They recommend, among other actions, that states should ensure timely and affordable access to good quality sexual and reproductive health information and services, including contraception, which should be delivered in a way that ensures fully informed decision-making, respects dignity, autonomy, privacy and confidentiality, and is sensitive to individual's needs and perspectives. In order to accelerate progress towards attainment of international development goals and targets in sexual and reproductive health, and in particular to contribute to meeting unmet need for contraceptive information and services, the World Health Organization (WHO) has developed guidelines and recommendations on ensuring human rights in the provision of contraceptive information and services. The presentation will provide an overview of the process used to develop the guidelines and recommendations made by WHO for policy-makers, managers, providers and other stakeholders in the health sector on some of the priority actions needed to ensure that different human rights dimensions are systematically and clearly integrated into the provision of contraceptive information and services.
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PS02.3
Regional analyses of abortion laws and policies in the context of international human rights standards
Rajat Khosla1, Brooke Ronald Johnson1, Bela Ganatra1, Vinod Mishra2
1WHO, Geneva, Switzerland, 2UN Population Division, New York, USAThe Global Abortion Policies Project is designed to further strengthen global efforts to eliminate unsafe abortion by producing an open-access, interactive database and repository of current abortion laws, policies, and national standards and guidelines for all countries in the world. The Project aims to increase the transparency of abortion laws and policies and accountability for implementation and protection of women’s health and human rights. The database/repository will facilitate comparisons of national laws and policies with WHO guidelines and international human rights standards related to safe abortion.
Within the context of this project this presentation will provide regional analyses of abortion laws and policies in the context of international human rights standards and highlight the areas of progress and gaps that remain.