ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by contextualising the issue by providing a brief introduction to the international human rights law on each issue. The Committee on the Women’s Convention in its General Recommendation 24 on ‘women and health’ provides that state ‘legislation criminalising abortion should be amended, in order to withdraw punitive measures imposed on women who undergo abortion’. The controversial nature of abortion was reflected in the Universal Periodic Review process, as over half of all the recommendations issued on abortion were not accepted by states under review under both cycles of review. In 2002, a United Nations Special Rapporteur reaffirmed that hindrances on women’s own sexual and reproductive lives, which are based on cultural and traditional norms, were a violation of a woman’s human right to health. The jurisprudence has emanated from various international human rights law treaties that persistently declared female genital mutilation as a violation of women’s rights under a range of international human rights instruments.
