The United Nations first formulated human rights in childbirth indirectly, through the language of preventable maternal mortality and morbidity, rather than by announcing a separate, freestanding “right to childbirth.”
The key starting point was the UN Human Rights Council’s 2009 resolution on “Preventable maternal mortality and morbidity and human rights”. That resolution framed preventable maternal death and injury as connected to women’s and girls’ rights to life, dignity, education, information, the benefits of scientific progress, freedom from discrimination, and the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including sexual and reproductive health. In other words, childbirth was first brought into UN human rights law through the problem of women dying or being seriously harmed in pregnancy and birth, especially where such deaths and harms were preventable.
The formulation was developed further in the 2010 OHCHR report to the Human Rights Council, which set out a conceptual framework for understanding maternal mortality and morbidity as a human rights issue. The report treated preventable maternal death not as natural tragedy or clinical misfortune, but as potentially resulting from state action or omission. It identified state obligations to respect, protect, and fulfil human rights in relation to pregnancy and childbirth, and linked maternal health to rights including health, equality and non-discrimination, information, education, and access to the benefits of scientific progress. It also identified core human rights principles: accountability, participation, transparency, empowerment, sustainability, international assistance, and non-discrimination.
This was then operationalised in the 2012 OHCHR Technical Guidance on applying a human rights-based approach to policies and programmes for reducing preventable maternal mortality and morbidity. That guidance moved the UN formulation from principle to policy: women were described as rights-holders, states and health systems as duty-bearers, and accountability mechanisms were presented as necessary to ensure that women could claim their rights and that health systems could be monitored and corrected. Nohr’s thesis emphasises that the Technical Guidance framed the approach as one “premised upon empowering women to claim their rights, and not merely avoiding maternal death or morbidity,” while also establishing mechanisms of accountability, transparency, participation, empowerment, non-discrimination, universality, and equity.
So, in substance, the UN first formulated human rights in childbirth by transforming childbirth from a matter of clinical outcome alone into a matter of legal obligation and governance. The concern was no longer only whether a woman survived childbirth, but whether she received care that was accessible, non-discriminatory, respectful, informed, accountable, and consistent with human dignity. Later respectful maternity care frameworks and charters translated this into more childbirth-specific language, such as freedom from ill-treatment, informed consent, privacy, dignity, equality, autonomy, and access to quality care, but the UN’s initial formulation came through the maternal mortality and morbidity agenda rather than through a stand-alone childbirth rights treaty.
The United Nations first formulated human rights in childbirth not as a separate right to a particular kind of birth, but as part of a broader human rights-based approach to preventable maternal mortality and morbidity. Beginning with the Human Rights Council’s 2009 resolution and the OHCHR’s 2010 report, preventable maternal death and injury were reframed as matters of state obligation, discrimination, accountability, dignity, information, and the right to health. The 2012 OHCHR Technical Guidance then operationalised this framework by identifying women as rights-holders, health systems and states as duty-bearers, and accountability, participation, transparency, empowerment, and non-discrimination as necessary principles for maternal health policy.
References:
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. (2010). Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on preventable maternal mortality and morbidity and human rights(A/HRC/14/39). United Nations.
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. (2012). Technical guidance on the application of a human rights-based approach to the implementation of policies and programmes to reduce preventable maternal mortality and morbidity (A/HRC/21/22). United Nations.
United Nations Human Rights Council. (2009). Preventable maternal mortality and morbidity and human rights(A/HRC/RES/11/8). United Nations.