A/HRC/33/23
24.
The technical guidance was shared in various meetings, including the One Asia
Breastfeeding Partners Forum in Malaysia, and was brought to the attention of participants
at different forums, including the United Nations Inter-agency Task Force on the
Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases, the African Child Policy Forum in
South Africa and the Social Forum on access to medicines. It was also presented to an
expert meeting on the right to health in early childhood, as well as to the Seventh
Europediatrics Conference in Florence, Italy. The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and
Child Health also promoted the technical guidance among its network of over 500
members. It was also discussed in a number of stakeholder meetings for women’s and
children’s health, including in India and South Africa.
25.
Working-level discussions on the technical guidance were held between OHCHR
and WHO, and the Office of the Secretary-General as part of Every Woman Every Child,
and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Health Section staff in New York.
Furthermore, the High Commissioner for Human Rights met with the Executive Director of
UNICEF to discuss the implementation of the technical guidance at the country level.
26.
WHO and OHCHR produced an information leaflet on “Preventable deaths among
the world’s youngest children”, which was also widely disseminated. Other tools, including
a knowledge summary on operationalizing human rights in efforts to improve health, were
developed by WHO and the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health. With
other partners, OHCHR produced a number of guides on maternal and child health for
health policymakers, health workers, the judiciary and national human rights institutions.
WHO uses the technical guidance as a basis for integration of human and child rights
standards in its ongoing work in developing global standards of facility-based care for
young children.
27
Following the distribution of the technical guidance among permanent missions in
Geneva, Cyprus reported that the technical guidance had been distributed to all the
departments of the Ministry of Health involved in providing services to children, healthcare providers involved in the provision of health care to newborns and children and
professionals in charge of collecting data related to mortality of children working in the
health monitoring unit of the Ministry of Health. It further reported the consideration of the
technical guidance in the development of the country’s national strategy on the promotion,
protection and support of the rights of children related to health. Mozambique informed
OHCHR that the technical guidance had been disseminated to the Ministry of Health,
health-care providers and the National Child Council, which coordinates issues related to
children’s rights. The technical guidance is being used to build health programmes and
ensure better coordination between health-care providers and communities.
28.
Human rights mechanisms have been key in promoting the use of the technical
guidance by recommending its implementation at the national level to Member States.
Those mechanisms will therefore play a key role in ensuring accountability for human
rights-based approaches to preventing child mortality in their follow-up dialogue with
States.
29.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child has recommended the implementation of
the technical guidance in its concluding observations for Benin, Colombia, the Dominican
Republic, Eritrea, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Ghana, Haiti, Kenya, Mexico, Peru, Senegal,
Turkmenistan, the United Republic of Tanzania, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,
Zambia and Zimbabwe. Equally, as part of the universal periodic review, various States
have recommended taking action at all levels to address the interlinked root causes of
preventable mortality and morbidity of children under 5 and consider applying the technical
guidance to Angola, the Gambia, Guyana, Lesotho, Liberia and the Marshall Islands. In
addition, the Special Rapporteur on the right to health has recommended its implementation
in his missions to Malaysia and Paraguay.
GE.16-11320
7
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