International Conference on Population and Development at 15 years: achieving sexual and reproductive health and rights for all?

Sexual and reproductive health remains the contentious concept it was at the 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo, Egypt. In light of the recent 15-year review of ICPD, we suggest several areas where advocates, practitioners, and researchers can inform future progress for sexual and reproductive health. These include the following: improving measurement and accountability related to the evidence base for sexual and reproductive health, indicators of program success, and the tracking of resource flows; creating and renewing alliances to strengthen advocacy; and employing new resource mobilization strategies.

Using human rights to improve maternal and neonatal health: history, connections and a proposed practical approach.

We describe the historical development of how maternal and neonatal mortality in the developing world came to be seen as a public-health concern, a human rights concern, and ultimately as both, leading to the development of approaches using human rights concepts and methods to advance maternal and neonatal health. We describe the different contributions of the international community, women's health advocates and human rights activists. We briefly present a recent effort, developed by WHO with the Harvard Program on International Health and Human Rights, that applies a human rights framework to reinforce current efforts to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality.

The UNGASS Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS: one year later.

This article is one of a series commissioned to mark the tenth anniversary of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. It offers a critical assessment of the impact of the UNGASS Declaration of Commitment on national HIV/AIDS strategies and programs in relation to human rights one year after its adoption. The article reviews the process leading up to the Declaration and describes the limitations of the Declaration's explicit and implicit recognition of human rights.