MaterCare International has created a “Charter of Maternal Rights” it hopes will be adopted by leaders and decision makers around the world to help stem the high number of maternal deaths.

According to MaterCare’s Dr. Robert Walley, mothers in most of the world are treated with neglect, and changing this has “hardly been a high priority with anybody.” Walley is the executive director of the St. John’s, Nfld.-based MaterCare International, an international group of Catholic obstetricians and gynecologists that treat mothers and babies around the world that’s hoping to do something about this.

The preamble to the charter makes the case that “Mothers and their babies are among the poorest of the poor and are the most vulnerable physically.”

“They’re marginalized,” Walley told The Catholic Register. “There’s about 330,000 mothers (that) die every year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa” from complications during pregnancy, labour and delivery, and the six weeks following.

The charter, which pulls its substance from statistics as well as Catholic documents including the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Second Vatican Council, focuses on the human rights of mothers, maternal health care and necessary steps that must be taken by obstetricians and midwives. It says, “The causes of maternal deaths are well known, are readily preventable and can be successfully treated at comparable low cost. Proper measures, availability of skilled personnel at the time of birth and prompt emergency obstetrical care if things go wrong may save the lives of 90 per cent of the mothers.”

But Walley said too many world leaders are focused on population control as opposed to making giving birth safer and healthier worldwide, and he is not hopeful that world leaders will hear MaterCare’s message.

That said, he does point positively to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s statements at the 2010 G8 Summit in Huntsville, Ont. There, Harper announced Canada would pledge $1.1 billion towards a new global effort to improve maternal and child health in developing countries (dubbed the Muskoka Initiative).

In January 2011, the United Nations created the Commission on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health, co-chaired by Harper and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete.