Failure to Deliver: Violations of Women’s Human Rights in Kenyan Health Facilities
Providing women with affordable, accessible, and safe health services is a key obligation of the government of Kenya. However, as a new report produced by the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Federation of Women Lawyers—Kenya vividly illustrates, Kenya’s health care sector suffers from systemic and widespread problems that deny women high quality family planning and maternal health care.
Through interviews with women, health care providers, and government officials, Failure to Deliver: Violations of Women’s Human Rights in Kenyan Health Facilities documents a wide range of violations of women’s fundamental human rights. Findings include physical and verbal abuse of women seeking maternity services, detention of women and their babies for unpaid medical bills, and staff and equipment shortages that impair the ability to provide good care.
Very few formal channels exist to provide redress for the serious human rights violations taking place in both public and private health care facilities throughout Kenya. This report throws into sharp relief the need to remedy the rights violations that women in Kenya have endured, and to implement systematic changes to ensure that women’s rights are protected when they seek reproductive health care.
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