Experts from the agency believe that the opportunity to advance rights was lost.
As a missed opportunity to advance gender equality and health care, human rights experts from the United Nations qualified before the Ecuadorian government’s veto of the Organic Health Code that had previously been approved by the National Assembly.
The technicians considered that the veto to the regulations carried out on September 25 is “disappointing” and urged the country to “guarantee equal access to health care for women and girls, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people. ”.
The Code that passed the Legislative would have reformed health laws that, according to experts, currently have many loopholes, for example, when health care providers deny confidential procedures in the event that a woman or girl needs to resort to a abortion or emergency contraception.
They recalled that the country has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Latin America, that abortion is illegal except in very limited circumstances. On this point, they indicated that there are about 250 women in prison for having requested an abortion or having voluntarily interrupted their pregnancy.
In a statement they mentioned that the regulations would have provided greater protection to LGBT people with respect to so-called ‘conversion therapy’ practices and to intersex children in relation to medically unnecessary procedures.
They added that violence against women and girls prevails in Ecuador, as well as discrimination against certain groups, inside and outside the health system.
The document was signed by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Dubravka Simonovic, and the members of the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls.
On September 25, the Ecuadorian government justified the veto considering that its approach and contents did not conform to current demands, some derived from the pandemic.
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