Indigenous Women’s Maternal Health and Maternal Mortality

MRG has regularly supported the work of UNFPA with technical advice and guidance. Our collaboration began when, together with Health Poverty Action (HPA), we carried out research on access to sexual and reproductive health services (SHR) by indigenous women. The resulting publication, available below, was commissioned by UNFPA together with UNICEF and UN Women and originated in a request to these agencies by the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. The report, published in 2021, documents both a shocking lack of disaggregated data concerning indigenous women and girls in key statistical sources but also a consistent pattern of indigenous women having below-average access to and/or take up of sexual and reproductive health services. 

In 2022, MRG supported UNFPA in creating an action plan to advance Leave No One Behind (LNOB) in the organisation’s work. Key foci on LNOB factors and not groups, ways to prioritise between different forms of marginalization, and ways to capture better progress reporting on LNOB were taken forward. Additionally, MRG supported UNFPA in discussing barriers to recruitment of those with lived experience of being excluded within the organisation. 

In 2023, MRG once again supported UNFPA by drafting a chapter of their flagship annual report – which focused on LNOB.  The particular focus of the chapter was on data. 

In 2024, MRG will again work with HPA to update the report on indigenous women and girls’ SHR access.