The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health recognize the importance of comprehensive legislation as a foundation for policies, programs and services that promote equity, facilitate accountability, and respect and protect the rights of women, children and adolescents. The Global Strategy specifically calls for action to “promote laws, policies and social norms that advance women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health”, and “strengthen legal frameworks to register and address human rights violations, promote human rights literacy and provide age- and gender-appropriate protection services and safe spaces for women, children and adolescents, including in humanitarian and fragile settings.”

Robust legal systems provide an essential pillar for success across all aspects of health and development: they safeguard human rights, uphold the rule of law and ensure equality and non-discrimination. However, legislation can also be a source of discrimination and disparities. Overtly it can restrict access to services or facilities on the basis of age, gender or ethnicity. It can also condone existing discrimination by not taking active measures to remove the causes of discrimination.

As such, collecting SRMNCAH-related laws and regulations, and examining their strengths and weaknesses, with a view to assisting WHO Member States in strengthening their legal and regulatory frameworks in relation to the health of women, children and adolescents, are an essential component of MCA’s normative and technical support. Analysis of legal and regulatory instruments obtained through the SRMNCAH Global Policy Survey will assist legislators, policy makers, program  managers and health practitioners in improving and using legislation to strengthen their efforts to ensure that all women, children and adolescents, regardless of their origin, race, sex, health or other status, have equal access to those facilities, goods and services needed to guarantee their health and well-being.

In addition, ensuring that both MCA’s normative and technical work, and countries’ laws, policies, programmes and services related to women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health are informed and guided by recognized international human rights standards, further enhances accountability, promotes and facilitates meaningful participation of individual and communities in decisions making processes that affect their health and well-being, contributes to UHC goals, and ensures that no one is left behind. MCA’s lead role in providing support to the preparation of key General Comments by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on early childhood development, and child health, as well as the development of the Technical Guidance on the application of a rights-based approach to reducing preventable under-five mortality and morbidity, has provided a solid foundation for the application of human rights standards to improve women’s children’s and adolescents’ health and well-being.

To this end, MCA continues to, and will accelerate, the integration of human rights in the development and implementation of standards for high quality care for women, children and adolescents. This includes the preparation of human rights frameworks for respectful maternity and newborn care, and pediatric care global standards; and the development and implementation of human rights impact assessments for quality of care. In addition, capacity building of legislators, policy makers, health workers, as well as users of health programmes and services, is required to enhance legal and human rights awareness and literacy.

Enhanced human rights monitoring in the context of women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health will also be undertaken through systematic support to global and regional human rights treaty monitoring processes.