Developing the IPOV Charter on Human Rights in Childbirth

Introducing the roundtable series on Emerging Human Rights Standards on Obstetric Violence

PART ONE

Obstetric violence and abuse during maternity care remains a pressing human rights issue. Across the globe, women, girls and gender-diverse people report experiences of neglect, coercion, verbal abuse, medical interventions without free, prior and fully informed consent, and forced or coerced interventions, or denied respectful support they need during childbirth. These experiences are not isolated failures in medical care. They reflect systemic patterns of gender-based violence and discrimination within health systems which are now being recognised in international and regional human rights law.

For many years, feminist advocates, social scientists, and public health researchers have worked to draw attention to obstetric violence and disrespectful care, but law and human rights bodies were slower to respond with meaningful impact. Nevertheless, we are now witnessing a welcome shift in this specialist area. In recent years, the CEDAW Committee and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have begun to define obstetric violence as a violation of fundamental human rights, including the rights to equality, health, dignity and freedom from violence. These developments represent an important legal turning point.

What is at stake?

The struggle for safe motherhood has evolved from a narrow focus on physical survival to a broader recognition that safety also requires dignity, autonomy and respect. The White Ribbon Alliance Charter for Respectful Maternity Care makes it clear that maternal wellbeing is not only about clinical outcomes but about ensuring human rights during childbirth, including autonomy, dignity and freedom from discrimination.

Originally published in 2011, the Charter remains a key advocacy tool for respectful maternity care. It sets out seven fundamental rights of childbearing women, including the right to be free from harm, to give or refuse consent, to privacy, dignity, healthcare, and self-determination. The Charter’s significance lies in the fact that it grounds these maternal entitlements directly in international and regional human rights instruments. Its draws explicitly from binding treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, as well as the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women and the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights. In doing so, the Charter established an important foundation by that respectful maternity care is not merely an ethical aspiration or quality-of-care-issue, but a set of enforceable human rights. This is what established the Charter as such a powerful tool: It framed maternity care in human rights terms at a time when this connection was not yet clearly articulated in law.  At the same time, the Charter does not set out the detail of the various obligations that states must fulfil, and these remain implied through the rights it identifies.

While the Charter was recently updated in 2019 to include the rights of newborns, it does not fully reflect the significant and legal human rights developments that have emerged since its introduction and revision. New decisions from human rights bodies have clarified state obligations to prevent obstetric violence, ensure informed consent at every stage of childbirth and during emergencies, provide effective remedies for violations, and address the multiple and intersecting inequalities that shape experiences in the provision of maternal health services. 

Why a roundtable series?

To respond to these developments, members of the Legal and Human Rights Working Group of the International Platform on Obstetric Violence are convening a series of roundtables on Emerging Human Rights Standards on Obstetric Violence. The series will bring together legal practitioners and academics from around the world to examine how obstetric violence is being defined and addressed from a human rights perspective. Building from the Respectful Maternity Care Charter, a central aim of the series is to contribute to developing the IPOV Charter of Human Rights which will reflect contemporary human rights standards. By aligning the Charter with recent rulings from human rights bodies, the IPOV Charter will ensure that advocacy efforts can continue to draw on a tool that reflects the most current human rights standards. In doing so, the IPOV Charter will serve as a trusted reference point for engaging with governments, courts, policymakers, and training bodies while also connecting women’s experiences of maternity care with the evolving obligations of states under international and regional human rights law.

Across four sessions, the roundtables will focus on examining the legal landscape. The first will focus on the foundational standards developed within the United Nations system. The second will examine the decisions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which to date offers the most developed body of decisions on obstetric violence. The third will look at comparative developments across Africa, Europe, and other regions, considering how different legal systems are responding. The final session will bring these strands together, distilling the principles that will inform the proposed content of the IPOV Charter that will later be opened to stakeholders for reflection, comment, and discussion. The process will culminate into a collectively endorsed IPOV Charter, to be published on the IPOV Platform, explicitly grounded in recent human rights decisions.

Moving forward

In developing the IPOV Charter, the roundtable series seeks to ensure that respectful maternity care is recognised as a human right with clear legal force. It also creates a sustained space for legal and human rights debate, addressing the lack of dedicated forums for this work within the field of obstetric violence. While much of the existing work on obstetric violence has emerged from medicine, public health, and feminist activism, recent decisions demonstrates that law and human rights are now central to shaping standards, responsibilities, and avenues for accountability. The roundtables are designed as a forum for critical engagement with these emerging legal developments, enabling collective reflection on how human rights law is conceptualising obstetric violence and what this means for advocacy, litigation, and reform. We invite you to follow this journey with us, contribute your perspectives, and help ensure that law plays its full role in challenging and preventing obstetric violence.

Emerging Human Rights Standards on Obstetric Violence

This three-part series introduces IPOV’s roundtable process on emerging human rights standards on obstetric violence. Across the three articles, Camilla Pickles, Romina Gallardo and Veronica Garcia de Cortazar examine how international and regional human rights bodies are progressively recognising obstetric violence as a violation of fundamental rights, clarifying State obligations, and contributing to the development of the future IPOV Charter on Human Rights in Childbirth.