UN Human Rights Committee Recommends India Improve Access to SRH Services and Education

The UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) recently released its Concluding Observations after its review of India, making several recommendations that the government take action to improve access to sexual rights and health (SRH) services and education to help reduce maternal mortality and unintended pregnancies.

The observations were released July 25 after the HRC’s review of India’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR) July 15-16 as a part of its fourth periodic reporting. India was last reviewed in the year 1997.  

In its Concluding Observations, the HRC highlighted the legal and policy barriers that impede access to abortion and reproductive rights in India, including:

• The lack of clarity in law, including with the adoption of the latest criminal code (Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023);
• Fear of prosecution amongst medical service providers;
• Severe restrictions on accessing abortion post 20^th week of pregnancy;
• Third party authorization and conscientious objections from medical service providers.

Such barriers push women and girls to seek unsafe and clandestine abortions, increasing the risk of maternal mortality, noted the HRC.

In this context, the HRC made four recommendations that focused on addressing barriers to safe abortion access, ensuring comprehensive and unimpeded access to SRH services and education, and ensuring free and informed consent for all sterilization procedures.

The specific recommendations, as listed in the observations in the section addressing termination of pregnancy, maternal mortality and sexual and reproductive rights, call on India to:

• (a) Ensure that women and girls have effective access to safe and legal abortion; that medical service providers who assist them are not subject to criminal penalties; and lift barriers, such as those related to third party authorization, that induce women and girls to resort to unsafe abortions;
• (c) Increase its efforts to ensure full and unimpeded access to sexual and reproductive health services and reproductive health education among women, men and adolescents, with a view to reducing maternal mortality and preventing unintended pregnancies;
• (d) Ensure that domestic legislation banning selective abortions is effectively enforced;
• (e) Ensure that forced sterilizations are eradicated and that the free and informed consent of the patients is provided in all sterilization procedures.

“HRC’s progressive language on SRHR is a welcome step,” said Brototi Dutta, Senior Advocacy Advisor of the Center for Reproductive Rights’ Asia program, reflecting on the HRC observations. “The call outs around removal of third-party authorization and chilling effect of criminal penalties are key barriers in accessing safe abortion, which has been documented in our earlier ground reports and analyses. The WHO abortion guideline and international human rights law, together with India’s constitutional guarantees and progressive national jurisprudence, provide guidance to implement these recommendations.”

Read the observations here:

> Human Rights Committee Concluding Observations on the fourth periodic report of India, July 25, 2024