Changing ourselves to change the world: AI’s policy consultation process on sexual and reproductive rights including abortion
In 2007, Amnesty International (AI) adopted a policy framework on sexual and reproductive rights, including a policy position on selected aspects of abortion. The process leading to the adoption of the policy framework manifested one of the objectives articulated in the early stages of AI’s global Stop Violence against Women campaign1 “Changing ourselves to change the world.” If AI was to advocate effectively for the right to be free from gender-based violence and address the causes and consequences of such violence, it first had to examine, clarify, and develop its internal policy on sexual and reproductive rights.
Having contributed to this process as the Reproductive Rights Coordinator in the Policy Program of AI International Secretariat, I would like to share some reflections on the consultation process, the policies adopted and AI’s evolving perspective on research and campaigns in defence of sexual and reproductive rights.
Changing ourselves
AI’s global campaign to Stop Violence against Women came about as a result of internal and external lobbying by women’s rights activists. It is the product of a broader process of change: AI’s move from a narrowly focused mission to a broader mandate to advance both the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its commitment to reflecting women’s human rights more comprehensively in its programme of work.
Before the campaign was launched in March 2004, there was a felt need for AI to consider developing its policy in relation to sexual and reproductive rights particularly with respect to abortion. AI had previously developed projects, research and campaigns on specific areas of sexual and reproductive rights issues in the different areas of the organisation’s work.
For instance, through its “Human Rights are Women’s Rights” campaign launched in 1995, AI opposed the Chinese government’s practice of coerced abortions and sterilisation of women.2 It also defended sexual and reproductive rights defenders who were at risk, such as a Peruvian activist campaigning against forced sterilisations.3
AI also joined women’s groups who worked at the international policy level countering the “unholy alliance” of governments attempting to roll back human rights relating to sexuality and reproductive health at the Beijing+5 conference in 20004 and advocated for gender-specific provisions of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The organisation had also raised sexual rights issues as part of its work to end discrimination and persecution based on sexual orientation or gender identity.5
But lacking conceptual, policy, and strategy frameworks on sexual and reproductive rights, AI did not consistently frame human rights violations identified explicitly as violations of sexual and reproductive rights. Such violations were not viewed as manifestations of broader fundamentalist attacks on women’s bodies, against women as activists on sexuality and reproduction issues, and against defenders of women’s human rights.6
While AI had opposed forced abortion of women as a form of torture or ill-treatment, it did not take a position on other human rights aspects of abortion, including criminalisation. Research addressing any aspect of abortion tended to include references to authoritative statements contained in international conference outcome documents and those made by the United Nations treaty monitoring bodies and special mechanisms. AI refrained from explicitly endorsing these or making its own findings and recommendations.
In its Stop Violence against Women campaign, AI also left out abortion when addressing concerns relating to rape victims’ access to comprehensive care.7
In 2003 and 2004, AI campaigned on cases of women in Northern Nigeria imprisoned on suspicion of abortion but charged with ‘culpable homicide punishable by death.’ This was in accordance with the AI’s unconditional opposition to the death penalty. AI also took a discrimination and fair trial approach but did not oppose the women’s criminalisation and imprisonment for abortion. AI made a general recommendation in support of law review and reform to bring criminal and penal legislation, including the Shari’a law, into conformity with international human rights standards.8 AI’s leadership acknowledged that the organisation needed to examine its position on abortion in the context of a framework on sexual and reproductive rights. This process was considered essential to AI’s work on women’s human rights and to an effective Stop Violence against Women campaign. Hence in 2005, AI’s leadership initiated a movement-wide policy consultation process aimed at enabling agreed policies to be endorsed by AI’s highest decision-making body, the International Council Meeting.
As a membership organisation operating on democratic principles, AI undertakes consultation processes of this kind to reach decisions on the direction of its work and on major policy issues. Supported by infor mation and discussion materials produced by the International Secretariat, AI’s sections and structures conducted consultations on the direction of policy development and draft policies with their members at Annual General Meetings and other membership fora. The process was also aimed at enabling membership education and awareness-raising on the issues. Some sections of AI used the process as an opportunity for comprehensive capacity-building on the issue of sexual and reproductive rights.
AI Paraguay, for instance, convened a sexual and reproductive rights team from members of its national executive committee. With the support of external NGO experts, AI Paraguay conducted ten workshops for members on issues covering AI’s previous work on the issues, basic concepts, anatomy and physiology, family planning and contraception, STIs, HIV/AIDS and discrimination, sexual diversity, combating heterosexism, and abortion. Adding depth to the materials provided by the International Secretariat, the section mapped Paraguay’s national legal and policy framework on the issues and national statistics.
Membership feedback guided the leadership’s decisions on the pace and direction of the consultation process, and on policy options. One international meeting on AI’s sexual and reproductive rights policy in 2005 was attended by representatives of more than 50 sections. Experts on sexual and reproductive rights representing a variety of NGOs, academic and inter-governmental perspectives advised AI to take a broad and holistic approach in developing its policy framework on a range of sexual and reproductive rights issues and to include but not exceptionalise abortion as among these issues.
However, AI’s leadership acknowledged that abortion would raise particular concer ns for AI’s members. It was decided that, abortion should be given particular space in the consultation. Nevertheless, the process was guided by an acknowledgment of the essential interrelatedness and indivisibility of sexual and reproductive rights in the realities of women’s lives. It was understood that AI would situate its future work on abortion within a broader program of work on sexual and reproductive issues relating to violence against women, and other long-standing and emerging priority concerns on its strategic agenda. The latter includes preventable maternal deaths.
The process was to enable AI to make an informed decision on its position on whether or not a woman’s right to physical and mental integrity includes her right to terminate her pregnancy, subject to reasonable limitations. The process would clarify AI’s position on whether abortion should therefore be made legal, safe and accessible to all women. This was discussed at AI’s 2005 and 2007 International Council Meetings.
The 2005 meeting affirmed that the continuing policy process should be based on the recognition that women’s need and access to safe and legal abortion be seen in the context of violence against women; the lack of empowerment of women, as well as their lack of access to education and health services like contraception.
AI’s discussions at national and international levels confirmed that process and policy would be based on an acknowledgment that some people hold strong views in relation to the moral and legal status of abortion. A diversity of moral, philosophical and religious perspectives on abortion was represented within AI’s membership. However, the consultation process also confirmed that there was broad support for AI taking a human rights position on selected aspects of abortion.
The process, framing and formulation of draft policy statements prepared for the membership’s consideration, benefited enormously from the support of NGOs and individual human rights defenders who generously shared their experience and expertise. NGOs and activists also helped AI reflect on the processes that other organisations had gone through in deciding on their policy position on abortion.
At a 2005 international meeting of AI members, Likhaan Chair of the Board of Directors, Dr. Sylvia Estrada- Claudio juxtaposed a reflection on her own experience as a doctor working with torture victims and women’s reproductive health and sexual rights issues. Linking this experience to the development of AI’s human rights agenda, she observed that, “unlike human rights categories and developmental frameworks, women in poor communities make no distinctions between their reproductive rights in the private sphere of intimate relations and their civil and political rights in the public sphere.” Drawing lessons from Likhaan’s policy development process, she argued that vision, strategy, and tactics all needed to be considered in a careful and dialogical process of abortion policy development focused on morals, values, and vision.9
National, regional, and international developments during the time of AI’s sexual and reproductive rights consultation process further highlighted the urgent need for a policy. The organisation’s lack of policy on abortion meant it was not in a position to address specific human rights violations relating to abortion. The question arose whether not having a policy position on abortion (apart from forced abortion) could be considered ‘neutral’ from the perspective of evolving human rights standards. In 2004 and 2005, AI delegates participated in the ICPD+10 and Beijing+10 conferences– occasions marking the reaffirmation of international consensus language on abortion.
In 2005, Human Rights Watch published its first report dealing with human rights violations relating to abortion. 10 Requiring state parties to make abortion legal and accessible at least in certain circumstances, the African Women’s Rights Protocol came into force in November 2005.11 In 2006, advocates moved the Colombian Constitutional Court to invalidate the country’s restrictive abortion law on human rights grounds. Human rights bodies broke new ground in finding governments responsible for making legal abortion services accessible in Peru (Human Rights Committee 2005) and Poland (European Court of Human Rights 2007). Safe abortion was highlighted as essential to implementing several of the Millennium Development Goals.12
Acknowledging the importance of strengthening AI’s work on the prevention of unwanted pregnancies and other factors contributing to women’s recourse to abortion, the 2007 International Council Meeting
affirmed AI’s adoption of a policy on abortion. AI now calls for the decriminalisation of abortion: the reform of all laws which permit the imprisonment or imposition of any other criminal sanction on women for seeking or having an abortion or which provide for imprisonment or other criminal penalties solely for those providing information about or carrying out abortions.
AI can now demand access to medical services for complications arising from abortion for all women, in any circumstance, regardless of the legal status of abortion. It can campaign for states to take all necessary measures to ensure that safe and legal abortion ser vices are available, accessible, acceptable, and are of good quality for all women who require them in cases of unwanted pregnancy as a result of rape, sexual assault or incest, and pregnancy which poses a risk to the life or a grave risk to the health of the woman.
AI calls on states to ensure individuals’ access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health information and services, including sexuality education for women and men, prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections, safe motherhood, contraception, and methods for fertility regulation. It argues that states must reform or repeal laws and policies which place unreasonable restrictions on women’s access to sexual and reproductive health information and services. Governments should take appropriate steps to help women avoid unwanted pregnancies and prevent their consequent recourse to abortion, which should in no case be promoted as a form of family planning.
Changing the world
Even before AI was in a position to ‘change the world’ by addressing specific aspects of abortion through its human rights work, the organisation’s potential positioning on abortion became the subject of public and media attention. Like other policy debates of larger political and symbolic significance – for instance the discussion on whether and how the organisation works on economic, social and cultural rights issues13 – AI’s internal policy deliberation turned the organisation into a target for advocacy.
In March 2007, 49 health and human rights NGOs wrote to AI in support of its abortion policy discussion, indicating that AI’s decision on its abortion policy was meaningful and important in the defence of women’s rights as human rights.
However, some NGOs and representatives of the Catholic Church were also vocal in their disapproval of the fact that AI was considering moving towards a policy position in support of safe and legal abortion, a position they considered to be at odds with human rights. Cardinal Martino, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, for instance, made statements to the media threatening that if AI persisted in moving towards agreement on a policy on abortion, “individuals and Catholic organisations must withdraw their support” from the organisation.14
Urging AI members to “reconsider and rescind” the organisation’s abortion policy, Bishop Skylstad, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, however, indicated that the Catholic Church did not oppose the totality of AI’s policy on abortion: “Based on [its] commitment to women, the Church does not object to Amnesty International’s stand against criminal penalties for women who have undergone abortion. In fact, the Catholic Church has long held that these women need compassion and healing, not punishment.”15
Attacks on AI’s policy and the process by which it was agreed provoked strong reactions in AI’s defence. Organisations working in defence of a range of human rights came out in force to object such attacks as manifestations of a broader backlash against sexual and reproductive rights and the entire human rights framework.
For instance, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders objected to Cardinal Martino’s intervention which, it found, “questions the right of an independent human rights NGO to defend sexual and reproductive rights, but also questions the work of this NGO in the exercise of its broader functions” and “could have extremely serious repercussions on the protection of all human rights worldwide.”16 The Liaison Committee of the International NGO Conference of the Council of Europe expressed its support to AI “against attacks based on religious doctrine.” 17 Catholics for Choice stated: “Catholics may continue to support and fund Amnesty, safe in the knowledge that its work on this issue will save women’s lives when all other avenues to justice have failed. Amnesty International has taken an important step in showing that reproductive rights … are a vital part of the human rights canon.”18
AI’s membership and support base do not seem to have diminished as a result of its abortion policy. AI’s commitment and work continue to draw active support from people of conviction the world over.
AI can now comprehensively integrate sexual and reproductive health rights more comprehensively into its research and campaigns especially those on violence against women and human rights violations that cause and are a consequence of poverty (for instance, preventable maternal deaths and ill
health).19
As an international membership-based, independent movement, AI will seek to work in collaboration and solidarity with sexual and reproductive rights defenders, support their struggles and complement their voices.20
The process of change AI is engaged in continues – and its work in defence of sexual and reproductive rights will continue to challenge AI to become and be the change it wants to see in the world.
To Stop Violence Against Women, respect for women’s human rights is essential
Note: In 2007, Amnesty International released its position on abortion. The following text explores the scope of sexual and reproductive rights including their relation to abortion, and their links to gender-based violence, discrimination and coercion. The full text includes actual cases which further informed AI’s rethinking of sexual and reproductive rights and consequently, a position on abortion. The full text is available at http://archive.amnesty.org/actforwomen/sexual_and_reproductive_rights-eng
Violence against women and girls is a global pandemic. At least one out of every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime.
Every year, millions of women are raped by partners, relatives, friends and strangers, by employers and colleagues, soldiers and members of armed groups.
Violence in the family is endemic all over the world; the overwhelming majority of victims are women and girls.
In the USA, for example, women account for around 85 per cent of the victims of domestic violence. The World Health Organization has reported that up to 70 per cent of female murder victims are killed by their male partners.
Small arms and light weapons are the main tools of almost every conflict and, according to the UN Secretary- General, women and children account for nearly 80 per cent of the casualties.
As a human rights organization, Amnesty International cannot remain silent in the face of this suffering. We campaign against all of forms of violence against girls and women, wherever that violence happens and whoever perpetrates it.
Violence against women violates women’s rights to life, physical and mental integrity, to the highest attainable standard of health, to freedom from torture and their sexual and reproductive rights.
Upholding human rights, including women’s sexual and reproductive rights is essential to preventing and ending gender-based violence. The human rights of girls and women are also at stake whenever gender-based violence against them goes unchallenged and wherever survivors are denied access to the full range of remedies to which they are entitled.
Amnesty International supports women in claiming their rights. The lived experience of girls and women, including those with whom we work directly, shows how central sexual and reproductive rights are to their freedoms including their right to be free from gender-based violence and as a remedy where they have been subjected to such violence:
• Forced and child marriage is a violation of girls’ and women’s sexual and reproductive rights.
• Denying women access to reproductive health services is a violation of their reproductive rights. Denying them access to life-saving obstetric care is a violation of their right to life and a form of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
• Forced abortions or sterilizations carried out by family planning officials or others acting in an official capacity violate reproductive rights and are grave violations of physical and mental integrity amounting to torture.
• Obstructing rape survivors’ access to legal abortion services is a violation of their sexual and reproductive rights.
• Women must have access to safe and legal abortion services in cases of unwanted pregnancy as a result of rape, sexual assault, or incest.
• Imprisonment or other criminal sanctions for seeking or having an abortion is a violation of women’s reproductive rights.
• Women must have access to safe and legal abortion services where continuation of pregnancy poses a risk to their life or grave risk to their health.
• Individuals have the right to seek, receive and impart information in relation to sexuality and reproduction without unreasonable restrictions. They have the right to access to information and services regarding sexual and reproductive health, including those in relation to prevention of sexually transmitted infections.
• Women have the right to not be denied maternal health care, which should be accessible, affordable, adequate and of sufficiently high quality, taking into account their cultural needs. They have the right to access health care without discrimination.
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