PHA-Exchange> New Paper: Women's Health in a Free Market Economy

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"A Decade After Cairo:
Women's Health in a Free Market Economy"
by Sumati Nair and Preeti Kirbat with Sarah Sexton
Corner House Briefing no 31
June 2004
http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk


It is now ten years since the UN held its International
Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. Its
Programme of Action was the first and most comprehensive
international policy document to promote the concepts of
reproductive rights and reproductive health.

Its major recommendation -- that population programmes should
provide integrated reproductive health services rather than
just family planning -- reflects the organising and lobbying
of women's groups.

One decade later, however, some 600,000 women die each year
(95 per cent of them in sub Saharan Africa and Asia) while 18
million are left disabled or chronically ill because of
largely preventable complications during pregnancy or
childbirth. These figures indicate that many women do not
have access to essential and emergency obstetric care, let
alone access to more comprehensive reproductive health
services.

Indeed, health services in many countries are in terminal
decline. The underlying conditions that determine women's
health and their ability to make decisions about their
childbearing are deteriorating. Fundamentalisms opposing
women's rights are on the rise. And Malthusian thinking is as
ingrained as ever in many development institutions, donor
agencies and government departments.

These four trends can be attributed in large measure to the
implementation of neo-liberal economic policies over the past
two decades, first by means of structural adjustment
programmes and more recently by international trade
agreements. Such policies have helped to prevent the more
progressive aspects of the Cairo Programme of Action from
being implemented.

More critically, however, the Programme of Action, and the
political organising that accompanied it, did not challenge
this neo-liberal framework sufficiently. In fact, it endorsed
it in several respects.

A closer look at the ways in which neo-liberalism has
impacted upon women's reproductive rights may suggest avenues
for more fruitful alliances with other social movements in
the future.


Corner House Briefing 31, "A Decade After Cairo: Women's
Health in a Free Market Economy" is now on the Corner House
website, www.thecornerhouse.org.uk, in html and PDF formats.

Please contact us enquiries at thecornerhouse.org.uk if you
would like a printed paper copy or to receive an electronic
copy directly rather than via the website.



Sarah Sexton/Larry Lohmann/Nicholas Hildyard
THE CORNER HOUSE
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Dorset DT10 1YJ
BRITAIN
Tel: +44 (0)1258 473795
Fax: +44 (0)1258 473748
Email <cornerhouse at gn.apc.org>
Website: www.thecornerhouse.org.uk