A/HRC/14/39 56. UNAIDS, UNFPA, WHO and other entities provide technical support to scale up comprehensive prevention of perinatal transmission of HIV, which includes (a) integration of HIV counselling and testing and other services such as safe delivery and infant feeding in maternal health-care settings, (b) advocacy to meet the sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights of women living with HIV (including information on their right to determine the number and spacing of their children) and (c) access to family planning and other sexual and reproductive health services.104 C. Accountability 57. The human rights mechanisms represent a developed framework to ensure accountability at the international level, including through complaints mechanisms established through optional protocols to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and ICESCR. In the context of measuring State compliance with international, regional and national human rights standards, WHO and the Program on International Health and Human Rights, Harvard School of Public Health, have developed a tool that provides a method for countries to use a human rights framework to identify and address legal, policy and regulatory barriers to peoples’ access to, and use of, maternal health services, and to the provision of quality services. The tool has been field tested and used in more than 10 countries.105 V. Conclusions and recommendations 58. In its resolution 11/8, the Human Rights Council specifically calls for recommendations on how the Council can add value to existing initiatives through a human rights analysis, including efforts to achieve Millennium Development Goal 5 on improving maternal health, and options for better addressing the human rights dimensions of preventable maternal mortality and morbidity throughout the United Nations system. With the adoption of the resolution, the Human Rights Council has explicitly requested States to “redouble their efforts to ensure the full and effective implementation of their human rights obligations” (para. 3) in the context of eliminating preventable maternal mortality and morbidity. While the work of the United Nations human rights mechanisms, international and regional actors has progressively elaborated on the human rights dimensions of maternal mortality, as well as on the human rights violations that need to be addressed, prevented or remedied in this area, the value of a collective commitment to a human rights approach cannot be overestimated. In particular, the existence of maternal mortality and morbidity is fundamentally linked to violations of the human rights “to life, to be equal in dignity, to education, to be free to seek, receive and impart information, to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress, to freedom from discrimination, and to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including sexual and reproductive health”106 and “requires the effective promotion and protection of the human rights of women and girls”107 as detailed by the treaty bodies and summarized in this study. 104 105 106 107 20 UNFPA response to the note verbale, p. 11. Hunt and Bueno de Mesquita, Reducing Maternal Mortality, p. 10. Human Rights Council resolution 11/8, para. 2. Ibid. GE.10-12949