On Crises and Contraception

By Contributor | March 3, 2011

Among the events of this week’s Commission on the Status of Women, the permanent missions of Australia and Indonesia sponsored the launch of the Interagency Working Group’s Manual on Reproductive Health in Humanitarian Situations.

IAWG membership includes UNFPA, UNHCR, the WHO, the World Bank, and UNAIDS, as well as organizations like IPPF and the Guttmacher Institute. The group was created during the 1990s to address reproductive health issues during post-conflict situations.

The Australian Ambassador to the UN, Gary Quinlan, began his remarks by praising the new manual, and he continued by boasting about Australia’s overseas development budget, whose health sector (including reproductive health) is not subject to any budgetary restrictions or changes. He saw this sort of fiscal prioritizing as key in preventing maternal deaths and unintended pregnancies among refugees and victims of conflict.

Other panelists praised the manual’s particular focus on adolescents and family planning. The deputy executive director of UNFPA, Ms. Purnima Mane, gave a glowing recommendation of the field manual as the minimum best practices standard for field work in post-conflict situations.

Most striking in the new manual is an entirely new chapter devoted to “Comprehensive Abortion Care.” This chapter counsels reproductive health providers on how to properly accommodate a woman’s desire for an abortion at different stages of pregnancy, what type of abortion they can use, and how to be aware of various legal and social restrictions that could inhibit access to “safe abortion.”

Of further note is the manual’s overwhelming focus on providing contraception to those affected by humanitarian crises. The program’s goal of decreasing maternal mortality and morbidity among conflict-affected populations seems to be achieved mainly through attempts to prevent pregnancy all together. Of the twelve different reproductive health kits recommended in the minimum initial service package, only three deal directly with safe delivery and emergency obstetrics, while six supply various types of short and long-term contraceptives, as well as the materials necessary for abortions.

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