News

On the occasion of the 16 Days of Action Campaign; WGNRR calls on governments, international organisations, national human rights activists and international partners to include institutional violence that is generated by the lack of access to reproductive health services, including safe and legal abortion, into your advocacy agenda to combat violence against women. Equally, we are calling for the inclusion of policies that will protect human rights defenders; and particularly the advocates of access to safe and legal abortion. With protective policies in place, WHRD are able to carry out their work free of stigma, discrimination, and fear of violence and death.

We, a group of civil society activists and advocates for sexual and reproductive health and rights, are writing to you to express our concern about the recent death of Savita Halappanavar, who was repeatedly denied an abortion in Galway. This tragic case demonstrates, once again, that the prohibition of abortion in Ireland is not just undermining the autonomy of the women across the country; it is leading to unacceptable suffering and even death.

…systematic denial and withholding of access to safe and legal abortion through restrictive laws on the one hand and through obstructing access to services on the other hand constitutes an act of institutional violence which has a detrimental effect in the lives of all women in need of safe abortion services, specifically impacting the most marginalised groups such as young unmarried women, women with disabilities, HIV positive women, ethnic minorities, sex workers, LGBT and others.

It is deeply worrying that the government of Ireland -a member country of the European Union- still does not protect, respect and fulfill women’s rights even thought they have signed and ratified international instruments, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and ICPD PoA Declarations, which establish sexual and reproductive rights as human rights. The women’s right to access to integral reproductive health services, including abortion, is ingrained in the international human rights standards, which assures the right to life, health, privacy, and non-discrimination of women.

Forced abortion and sterilisation is a human rights violation. China is accountable to its obligations to the international standards that its State is party to.

WGNRR urgently calls on the national government of Morocco to stop harassing the Abortion Ship and to immediately allow its safe return to the Smir harbour to complete the mission. We demand that all women should have access to affordable, accessible, safe abortion i to ensure that no woman will die due to unsafe methods of abortion.

The Dominican Parliament is considering to change its penal code in ways that are very harmful to women, diminishing sanctions for violence, banning abortion completely, and reducing sanctions against incest and sexual harassment.

WHRD IC believes the detention, seizure and raid on the organization’s offices were arbitrary. They also consider the act of arresting and charging WONETHA’s staff members as an attempt to criminalize the legal activities of a women human rights organization. WHRD IC assert that this behaviour is based solely on discrimination against sex workers, the community WONETHA serves.