Maternal Mortality, Human Rights and Accountability

Maternal mortality remains one of the highest causes of death in the world today. A fact recognised by the UN Human Rights Council and the international community by way of the Millennium Development Goals.

This book focuses on a critically important part of maternal mortality and human rights, that of monitoring, accountability and redress at the local, national and international level. The book features contributions from an impressive list of researchers, scholars, legal practitioners and activists including: Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe; Paul Hunt; Navanethem Pillay; and Samantha Lobis. The book functions as an introduction to some of the key issues on maternal mortality, human rights and accountability, and provides a valuable link between academic debates, discussions at UN and NGO level, and practice on the ground.

The scale of maternal mortality and morbidity today is staggering. This book focuses on a vital part of a human rights response to maternal mortality, viz. accountability. Accountability encompasses monitoring, review and redress at the local, national and international levels. The book''s context includes the UN Human Rights Council maternal mortality and morbidity resolutions, as well as Millennium Development Goal 5. It comes out of a roundtable conference held in Geneva during 2010 that examined maternal mortality, human rights and accountability and provided a forum where maternal health and human rights experts could listen to, and learn from, each other. As well as revised and updated conference papers, this volume includes a rich collection of additional resource material on maternal mortality, human rights and accountability.