Some United Nations human rights experts expressed their concern yesterday regarding the application of the Population Control Healthcare Bill in Myanmar, which is part of a four-bill package aiming to ‘protect race and religion’. They estimated that these bills could be considered as discriminatory against ethnic and religious minorities, as well as against women.
Jun 02 2015 | By CIPADH
Some United Nations human rights experts expressed their concern yesterday regarding the application of the Population Control Healthcare Bill in Myanmar, which is part of a four-bill package aiming to ‘protect race and religion’. They estimated that these bills could be considered as discriminatory against ethnic and religious minorities, as well as against women.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, regrets the enactment of those discriminatory laws, which further exacerbates community tension as thousands of Rohingya are already leaving the country by boat.
Even though these four bills are supposed to “improve living standards, alleviate poverty, ensure quality healthcare and develop maternal and child health,” some independent experts explained that imposing strategies to control population growth often has negative outcomes. They fear that it will “disproportionately target marginalized and minority groups and can have discriminatory, coercive and punitive effects that go against basic rights and freedoms, particularly those of women”. For example, the Population Control Healthcare Bill urges married couples from township groups to practice 36-month birth spacing between pregnancies.
The rights experts also question the purpose of three other bills which are currently being amended by the Parliament: the Religious Conversion Bill, the Myanmar Buddhist Women’s Special Marriage Bill and the Monogamy Bill.
More specifically, the Myanmar Buddhist Women’s Special Marriage Bill prevents Buddhist women from marrying non-Buddhist men. Emna Aouij, head of the Working Group on discrimination against women, admits that “[t]he Bill [clearly] discriminates against women by restricting the right to marry for Buddhist women and placing restrictions only on Buddhist women who wish to marry outside their faith.”
The Special Rapporteur on Myanmar called its government to “make sure its laws comply with fundamental human rights provisions and help rather than hinder progress towards a more tolerant, pluralistic and inclusive society”.