CSOs take abortion battle to UN
Human rights institutions have reported Malawi to the United Nations’ Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, querying its failure to fully legalise abortion, alleging its violating women’s rights and international treaties.
The organisations are foreign-based Human Rights Watch, International Human Rights Centre (IHRC), and locally based Young Woman’s Consortium (YWC) and Woman and Law in Southern Africa (WLSA).
Their show of discontent is contained in the reports they have filed to the UN committee ahead of its 72nd working group pre-session planned for next month.
In a joint report the IHRC, YWC and WLSA posted on the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies website tbinternet.ohchr.org, argue that abortion restrictions violate international human rights treaties such as the covenant on CESCR which Malawi acceded to in 1993.
Reads the report in part: “Article 3 of the Covenant requires States party to ensure “the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of all economic, social and cultural rights.”
The organisations further argue that criminalisation of abortion discriminates against women.
“The consequences laid out in the Penal Code, which tellingly begin with “any woman who…”, are only suffered by women, while men who are parties to the pregnancy remain unscathed.
“Criminalisation also uniquely impacts women by perpetuating stigma surrounding women and abortion while depriving them of their privacy, self-determination, and autonomous decision-making,” the report further reads.
Abortion is illegal in the country and punishable by imprisonment, unless surgical intervention is done in good faith for the “preservation of the mother’s life.”
Malawi was due to debate the Termination of Pregnancy Bill in Parliament in February 2021, but the Bill was not tabled.
They have since called for the repeal of Articles 149, 150 and 151 of the Penal Code “so that no criminal charges can be brought against women and girls who undergo abortion or against qualified health care professionals and all others who provide and assist in the abortion.”
The Penal Code sections spell out custodial sentences for the offender which range from three to fourteen years.
In July 2015, Malawi’s Special Law Commission on the Review of the Law on Abortion released a draft Termination of Pregnancy Bill, which, if Parliament approved, would have liberalised abortion.
Under the Bill, abortion would have become legal where continuing pregnancy endangers the life of the woman, termination is necessary to prevent injury to the physical or mental health of the woman, there is severe malformation of a foetus, and where pregnancy is a result of rape, incest, or defilement.
Parliament blocked a motion to introduce the Bill in the National Assembly. In June 2021, the motion was withdrawn.
Meanwhile, the Human Rights Watch in its submission to the UN committee has called for government to resubmit the “Termination of Pregnancy Bill for debate in Parliament and carry out public awareness campaigns on the dangers of unsafe abortions.”
