By Besir Ozbek, Floriane Borel, and Anene Regassa
Each week students at the University of Essex Human Rights Centre prepare an overview of the past week’s human rights related news stories from around the world.
This week’s story in focus
On December 11, 2018, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R.1318 – a bipartisan bill aimed at addressing the country’s persistently high rates of maternal mortality. The bill seeks to establish a program under the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services that will distribute grants to states to fund efforts investigating the factors contributing to pregnancy-related deaths and ultimately develop more effective strategies to reduce maternal mortality rates country-wide.
This bill is seen as a landmark victory for advocates across the country that have long been pushing for increased attention to be paid to the United States’ alarming rate of maternal deaths, which has been documented as the worst rate in the developed world. Indeed, contrary to trends observed in most other developed nations, maternal mortality in the U.S. has continued to rise between 1990 and 2015 and has been shown to disproportionately affect women of colour. These disparities have previously been condemned by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which highlighted the U.S.’ failure to adequately fulfil the right to health and access to health care for communities representing racial, ethnic and national minorities.
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