Humanity now stands at a total population of 8.1 billion, of which 2 billion are mothers. Apropos of this year’s Christmas celebrations throughout the Christian part of humanity, I’ve often had occasion to observe to my students that the classic Nativity story is also a stirring narrative of how the birth of Jesus Christ occurred within a dark vacuum of human rights suppressed during a time of violent occupation by a foreign imperial power. The imperial power orders a census of all its conquered peoples to levy more taxes on subjugated peoples (as well as determine identities of potential threats, rebels, and dissidents), forcing everyone to return to their respective hometowns to register themselves and their families. A heavily pregnant Mary, accompanied by her husband, is forced to travel for the census, while deprived of any access to safe housing or health care facilities, and ends up giving birth in a manger also without medical assistance or health care. This barely recovered new mother, her husband, and the infant Christ are forced to flee to Egypt when the local ruler orders the killing of all boys two years old and under, becoming refugees fleeing mass atrocity killings of infants and toddler children. Christians focus on the arrival of the child Jesus and its meaning (and understandably so), but to me this also illuminates the very difficult, and often obscured, journey of a human woman’s journey to motherhood, and all the distinct experiences of motherhood for the rest of human life.
Motherhood is supposed to enjoy a certain degree of protected status under international law (especially international humanitarian law), and yet the international legal protections conferred on mothers often revolve narrowly and relationally around the early years before, during, and after childbirth. These legal protections also focus only on biological conceptions of motherhood, leaving out the needs for international legal protection for all other forms of motherhood, such as adoptive mothers, mothers to children of a spouse, women taking on motherhood roles as legal guardians, and all situations of motherhood that are extended to children of all ages. One does not stop existing as a mother even when a child reaches the age of legal emancipation, but interestingly enough international law stops well short of considering the distinct legal status of special protection for mothers as they age right alongside their offspring. They can be protected internationally when they also function as workers or migrant workers, or when they experience disabilities in their lifetimes, or even if they become refugees. But there is no international treaty specifically protecting mothers and enabling the flourishing of mothers, or that seeks to realize their civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights throughout the course of mothers’ lives and distinct experiences of motherhood for the rest of their lives, because mothers are ultimately subsumed in the same general class of all individuals that access these rights throughout international human rights law treaties. The vulnerabilities of mothers at every age, from childbirth to old age to the end of their lives, are largely obscured and usually relegated into individual claims for protection in general international law. And yet, there is something to consider about the specific vulnerabilities of motherhood especially during global economic, political, environmental, health crises and disasters, that is rarely articulated in the form of special protections required for mothers during such crises and disasters. To the contrary, as the United Nations famously reported during the COVID pandemic and its associated health, economic, political, and environmental crises, “in crisis after crisis, mothers around the world are asked to do the impossible.” I argue that there remains a serious deficit in international legal protection that fails to recognize the particular vulnerabilities of mothers during global crises and disasters, that cannot be left unaddressed or muted into general individual legal protection claims that shade over the distinct experiences of motherhood, before, during, and well after, or separately from, the experience of childbirth. States can do more for the mothers of all humankind than expect them “to do the impossible” during global crises and disasters.
Disproportionate impacts of crises and disasters on mothers at every age
Mothers bear the disproportionate impacts of political, economic, environmental, health, security, and other related crises and disasters on: (1) their caregiving capacities and personal health, economic, and parenting support resources for children and wider family structures on the home front, as well as the usually uncompensated and yet supremely valuable roles of child-rearing, home maintenance, and constant support for family well-being; (2) their relative lack of job security (often called the “shecession” phenomenon) during mass layoffs occurring during economic and related crises and disasters; and (3) and their own lived deprivations of civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights during such crises and disasters. During the COVID pandemic, mothers around the world were forced to deliver their children in unsafe circumstances with little access to health infrastructure and governmental social support, while often forced to work informally and without legal protections to augment family incomes after job losses mounted in ubiquitous economic crises. The UN Secretary-General’s 2024 Report on Women, Peace, and Security noted the extreme hardships specifically faced by mothers in armed conflicts, such as “in Sudan, when 5,500 pregnant women and 7,000 new mothers may die in the coming months from starvation, as warring parties deliberately obstruct food aid. In Gaza, nearly 9 in 10 women find it harder to access food than men, and 84 per cent report that their family eats half or less of the food they ate before the war began, with mothers often skipping meals to feed their children.” (Report, at para. 44).
Mothers of all ages experience the greatest stressors and vulnerabilities during natural disasters, and are rarely themselves the direct addressees of assistance during such disasters. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2022 Report on Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability also recognized the specific harms of climate change to women who are expectant mothers (IPCC Report, p. 79). In times of extreme shocks from global crises and disasters, social expectations are more heavily placed on mothers’ resilience and inevitable self-sacrifice for their children’s welfare. Migrant women, especially migrant mothers, are at greater risk for and disproportionately affected by disasters, and will tend to bear central roles for families during forced displacements, often with little or no State support.
Scientific research has revealed more about the distinct vulnerabilities experienced by mothers throughout their lives, from childbirth to their old age. Some researchers report that “matrescence” is a condition of a lifetime impact of motherhood on cognition and the brain, with mothers taking on a much greater cognitive load than the period before these women became mothers. Other researchers report the mental health vulnerabilities and consequences associated with the journey of motherhood throughout one’s life, including postpartum mood disorders. Other researchers published findings of “relational vulnerability in motherhood“, with experiences of stress-related ill-health such as pain and exhaustion. Separating young children from their biological mothers has pernicious consequences on the neurobiological development and attachment and environmental adaptation potential of such children, while also imposing distinct and continuing stresses on mothers. Maternal stress and vulnerability to depression has also been scientifically validated. Unresolved trauma in mothers will tend to result in intergenerational consequences. A maternal vulnerability index was constructed by some researchers in relation to maternal health outcomes. When other vectors of vulnerability (such as poverty, destitution, lack of access to social security or social protection or any other challenging economic status, race, cultural heritage or minority status, lack of education, age, among others) intersect with the lived experience of motherhood throughout one’s lifetime, the negative impacts on mothers’ vulnerabilities are expectedly much deeper and prolonged during global crises and disasters. The United Nations also reports that older women, having already continuously experienced the vulnerabilities of motherhood in their lifetimes, tend to be rendered “invisible” during in any State responses to global crises and disasters.
Special Protection for Mothers under International Law
Despite these distinct vulnerabilities of mothers, to date, international human rights treaty law only narrowly draws the special protective status of mothers in Article 10(2) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which requires States to provide “special protection…to mothers during a reasonable period before and after childbirth. During such period working mothers should be accorded paid leave or leave with adequate social security benefits.” The 13th paragraph of the Preamble to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) also emphasizes “the social significance of maternity and the role of both parents in the family and in the upbringing of children“, while requiring States to adopt measures to protect maternity (Article 4); to “ensure that family education includes a proper understanding of maternity as a social function” [Article 5(b)]; and prevent discrimination against women’s effective enjoyment of the right to work on grounds of marriage or maternity [Article 11(2)].
If mothers are asked to do the impossible during global crises and disasters in light of the social significance and social function of maternity, international law as it stands at present unfortunately does not equip this distinct group of women with the tools to address their inherently experienced vulnerabilities as a distinct group. The Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women mentioned the specific vulnerabilities of pregnant women in its General Recommendation No. 37 (2018) on the gender-related dimensions of disaster risk reduction in the context of climate change, but the Committee omitted to discuss the distinct vulnerabilities of women who are mothers at every age within the specific contexts of disasters and related global crises. It may be high time to for the United Nations system to consider deliberating on the distinct nature and status of maternity as a lived experience throughout the lifetime of a woman from the time of childbirth until the woman’s old age, that comes with attendant vulnerabilities for which international legal protection has remained elusive thus far. Collapsing the distinct vulnerabilities of mothers throughout their lifetimes into the general claims for protection of individuals does not only reflect a thin understanding of the dignity of mothers as human persons, but it reifies the disproportionate negative impacts of global disasters and crises already experienced by mothers in their lifetimes. If the UN reported that it has seen mothers asked (and forced) to do with the impossible in crisis after crisis, it has a role to play in ensuring that the generosity, resilience, and selflessness of mothers does not cause the deepening of those disproportionate harms that mothers experience in global disasters and crises.
Conclusion: International Legal Recognition of Special Protection Duties to Address the Vulnerabilities of Mothers throughout their Lifetimes
In 2009, then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon strongly sought a policy shift at the United Nations to recognize the distinct status and vulnerability needs of mothers:
“Mothers play a critical role in the family, which is a powerful force for social cohesion and integration. The mother-child relationship is vital for the healthy development of children. And mothers are not only caregivers; they are also breadwinners for their families. Yet women continue to face major – and even life- threatening – challenges in motherhood.
Childbirth, which should be a cause for celebration, is a grave health risk for too many women in developing countries. Improving maternal health is the Millennium Development Goal on which the least progress has been made. A woman in a least- developed country is 300 times more likely to die in childbirth or from pregnancy-related complications than a woman in a developed country. We must make pregnancy and childbirth safer by enabling health systems to provide family planning, skilled attendance at birth and emergency obstetric care.
Violence against women, many of whom are mothers, remains one of the most pervasive human rights violations of our time. It has far-reaching consequences – endangering the lives of women and girls, harming their families and communities, and damaging the very fabric of societies. Ending and preventing violence against women should be a key priority for all countries.
We must also ensure universal access to education. The benefits of educating women and girls accrue not only to individual families but to whole countries, unlocking the potential of women to contribute to broader development efforts. Statistics also show that educated mothers are much more likely to keep their children in school, meaning that the benefits of education transcend generations.
As we strive to support mothers in their caregiving work, we should develop and expand family-friendly policies and services, such as child care centres, that would reduce some of the workload placed on women. Women and men alike need stronger public support to share equally in work and family responsibilities. Families built on the recognition of equality between women and men will contribute to more stable and productive societies.
We face multiple challenges in our changing world, but one factor remains constant: the timeless importance of mothers and their invaluable contribution to raising the next generation. By rewarding their efforts and enhancing their living conditions, we can secure a better future for all.”
Similar to the above, I am of the view that the first step to ensuring international legal protection of mothers is to recognize their distinct and inherent vulnerabilities throughout their lifetimes, separately from the experience of childbirth and child-rearing. Mothers are deserving of international legal protection — whether from international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international economic law and development, international environmental law and climate change law, among others — at every age throughout the experience of motherhood in their lives where such vulnerabilities are endemic. And yet, as UN Women report’s flagship report this 2024 appallingly stated, two billion women and girls (most of them mothers) today still lack access to any form of social protection (e.g. unemployment benefits, pensions, healthcare, among others). That is the most damning result for all our efforts under international law and human rights for a quarter of the overall 8 billion population of humanity.
We should not be suffering mothers’ invisibility from international legal protection, as the price for everyone else’s achievement of resilience, survival, and eventual flourishing from global crises and disasters, often exacted at the expense of the selfless generosity and sacrifice of humanity’s mothers. In a Charter-based international system that is supposed to be premised on “achiev[ing] international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion” [Charter of the United Nations, Article 1(3)], we cannot keep asking mothers to do, bear, and endure through the impossible, in crisis after crisis throughout the world, and still expect them to have any chance of flourishing in their lives, keeping intact their own dignity and value as human persons under international law.
