Our latest guest blog is from Naomi McAuliffe, Dignity, Poverty and Human Rights Campaign Manager, of Amnesty International UK .
You know how it is every year, Mother’s Day comes around and you hurriedly get a card and some flowers from the train station on your way to see her? OK, is that just me? Well this year I had a good reminder…
All the previous week I was working with activists and other organisations like Save the Children, Oxfam, White Ribbon Alliance and Mumsnet to urge people to send a Mother’s Day card to the leaders of the 3 UK political parties. This was part of our maternal health campaign where Amnesty International is drawing attention to the human rights abuses that lead to women dying in childbirth or due to pregnancy-related complications.
Half a million women – one every minute – die due to their pregnancy or childbirth every year. The vast majority of these deaths are entirely preventable. And we know how to prevent them. What we need is for governments to prioritise women’s health as a way of tackling poverty. They need to make their commitments real.
The Mother’s Day cards urged the party leaders to support the Manifesto for Motherhood, drawn up by the coalition of NGOs and detailing what needs to be done to tackle this problem: increase international aid, put women and children at the centre of health system building and ensure that women’s sexual and reproductive rights – such as the right to family planning, health information and sexual autonomy – are realized.
A number human rights abuses contribute to the numbers of maternal deaths we are seeing, including rape and sexual violence, early and forced marriage, female genital mutilation and domestic violence. But access to healthcare itself if a human right and too many women around the world are being denied this access because they are poor, marginalized and discriminated against.
Because of the fantastic work of activists and the organisations involved, the 3 UK political parties have now endorsed the Manifesto. But it doesn’t stop there. We don’t want this issue to go away and we need to ensure that all the parties know that they will be held to account for their commitments after the election whirlwind is over.
The UK has been a world leader on this issue for some time, but in the run up to the election we want to ensure that this continues to be the case. We have some significant events this year; the G8 in Canada in June and the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Review Summit in September. We need to make sure that maternal health is the priority at these meetings and real commitments are made.
So please keep sending the cards and emails to the party leaders to show the strength of feeling in the country for this issue. And check out the individual country work Amnesty International is doing together with women and organisations on the ground: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/mums