Motherhood & Human Rights

Though many politicians in the U.S. believe that maternal healthcare is unnecessary, maternal healthcare should be universal and guaranteed for every woman.

A new technological platform called Ushahidi could be used to help women in labor experiencing complications all over the world.

Though many mistakenly believe maternal health to only be an issue pertaining to women, it’s an issue that society as a whole needs to address.

A teenaged mother in Singapore discusses her decision to see her pregnancy through. The one person who helped her through the experience? Her mother. Watch on!

Art and policy joined forces as the Art Center College of Design launched a campaign to spread awareness.

In this video I talk about Nepal’s high maternal mortality rate. Unless the Nepalese Government and the people decides that maternal mortality is an issues of national importance and priority, the rates will remain high

Everything we talk about, maternal mortality, the breaking of promises such as those made at Cairo in 1994, the lack of family planning personnel and commodities, the feminization of AIDS, the ubiquitous nature of gender based violence, all this and more has to do with the basic issue of gender inequality.

68-year-old Aicha Ech Chenna has just been awarded the world’s largest faith-based prize for entrepreneurship, the Opus Prize. She has formed a social work practice with the sole purpose of helping unwed mothers.

Poor women in developing countries and their babies are dying in childbirth because of something as basic as a lack of money and resources. A filmmaker captures one Nigerian woman’s story as she gives birth.

In spite of all odds against them, India’s lower caste women are now organizing and standing up for their rights to maternal healthcare.

In Peru, a new bill related to women’s health and pregnancy has sparked a national conversation.

When a woman dies during pregnancy, childbirth or due to complications after delivery, it affects not only the family, but also the whole community. These videos, by different human rights organizations, go beyond statistics to tell us the stories of women and their families as they struggle to understand why it is that so many women are dying during childbirth and what needs to be done to stop this.

Despite all the talk about women being pivotal to the health of families, nations, and the global community, in reality women face many hardships, particularly in terms of maternal health. Although great strides are being made, more still needs to be done to ensure that every woman has basic health rights.

Maternal mortality is an all too common global problem. Thousands of women are dying everyday–how do we solve the problem?

Women speak out from all sides of the issue: adoptees, natural mothers and adoptive mothers try to make sense of the legal, reproductive and human rights issues behind adoptions.

Cultural norms can be tragically detrimental to the health of girls, young women and women living with HIV. When girls and young women are denied the right to comprehensive sexuality education, they may be unaware of how to access and use contraception, including condoms.

Humanitarian activist mothers in Asia are becoming icons for human rights causes worldwide. What does a woman sacrifice for the cause she fights for?

Women’s lives are considered less important. Why else would the world allow over 560,000 women to die in pregnancy and childbirth every year?

To improve maternal health, we must see every woman first and foremost a woman. Not as an African woman, a lower caste Indian woman, a discriminated Roma woman, a struggling Arab woman, or a “Third World” woman.

When the economies of world plummeted late last year, that “motherhood” would be a victim of the spiraling trend might not have been foremost in the minds of most. However, recent reports have indicated that mothers have ended up being as much a casualty of the recession as the stock markets.

Pregnant women are still giving birth handcuffed and with their feet shackled. In some places, it is a struggle to ensure human rights for pregnant women. What have been some of the steps made to ensure that they are treated humanely and with respect to the life they carry?

With influence from the Catholic Church, The Dominican Republic has made it illegal for women to terminate pregnancy. Bloggers discuss whether this is wise.

Is it worth it to have a big family? Women from Singapore are debating the “Baby Bonus initiative”, a government plan to raise declining birth rates. Yet, the initiative has not produced its desired results. Why?

Women’s health and rights just don’t seem to count that much – whether within the family or within parliaments. Had it been men, who were sacrificed in such numbers, investments would probably have happened a long time ago

If it goes against the religious mandates of a Catholic organization, can unwed pregnant females be fired from work or expelled from school? Bloggers in Philippines discuss this sensitive issue that goes against the rights pregnant women have.

281 Nepali women per 100,000 die during child birth. Most of the time because of preventable causes like excess bleeding and infection. Why are we letting this happen?

How do we avoid imposing our Western imperialists talk about “rights” on young women whose core beliefs diverge from ours?