Universal access to sexual and reproductive health services

This chapter of the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development recognizes sexual rights and reproductive rights as an integral component of human rights, going a step further than the recognition of reproductive rights in the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and placing Latin America and the Caribbean at the global vanguard in terms of rights recognition. As a result, sexual rights, reproductive rights, sexual health and reproductive health overlap, sometimes intricately, in the priority measures.

Progress towards the target of universal access to reproductive health services, as set forth in the Cairo Programme of Action and reiterated in target 5B of the Millennium Development Goals, has been insufficient and uneven. For example, the target on maternal mortality contained in the Millennium Development Goals is one of those that have not been met in Latin America and the Caribbean. According to the 2014 report on the Millennium Development Goals, maternal mortality in the Caribbean remains high, at a rate of 190 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2013, compared to a goal of around 80 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. In Latin America, the maternal mortality rate is much lower, at 72 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2010, but it too is very far from the target. Moreover, these averages mask great inequalities that cut across the sexual and reproductive health agenda. These inequalities relate to age, race, ethnicity or area of residence, and they affect in particular certain groups of women, for whom many of the indicators, in particular those for maternal mortality, are poor. It is estimated that 8,800 women die every year in Latin America and the Caribbean from causes related to pregnancy, childbirth or post-partum, and most of these deaths are preventable, which betrays a gap in the protection of women’s rights in many spheres of their life, such as lack of education, scant empowerment, lack of adequate and timely health services, and lack of quality statistics that would give visibility to the problem.