Menstrual Health and Human Rights: Legal Frameworks for Ensuring Accessibility
(2025) JAMM07 20251Department of Law
Faculty of Law
- Abstract
- Menstrual health is essential for people who menstruate to fully participate in daily life and social activities. It is also a fundamental human right that closely impacts the realization of other rights such as right to non-discrimination and education. In recent years, there has been increasing attention to menstrual health on both the international and national levels. However, significant barriers in accessing menstrual products, services and information persist. Ensuring menstrual health is an important step in advancing human rights protection, and integrating menstrual health into the right to health framework helps clarify state obligations and strengthen accountability.
This thesis examines the extent to which existing... (More) - Menstrual health is essential for people who menstruate to fully participate in daily life and social activities. It is also a fundamental human right that closely impacts the realization of other rights such as right to non-discrimination and education. In recent years, there has been increasing attention to menstrual health on both the international and national levels. However, significant barriers in accessing menstrual products, services and information persist. Ensuring menstrual health is an important step in advancing human rights protection, and integrating menstrual health into the right to health framework helps clarify state obligations and strengthen accountability.
This thesis examines the extent to which existing international and national legal frameworks recognize menstrual health as part of the right to health and identifies challenges that hinder the enforcement of state obligations regarding menstrual health accessibility. Building on the analysis, it proposes feasible legal and policy reforms on both international and national levels to support the effective realization of menstrual health accessibility.
This thesis focuses on the Accessibility element of the AAAQ framework (Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability and Quality), and is structured by its four dimensions as analytical tools: non-discrimination, physical accessibility, economic accessibility and information accessibility along with other issues related to enforcement and implementation. These dimensions, combined with a human rights-based approach are applied throughout the analysis to examine both the normative recognition and the practical enforcement of menstrual health as part of the right to health.
The findings reveal that despite been increasingly recognized through interpretive instruments and soft law, binding legal frameworks remain underdeveloped and menstrual health has not yet been systematically established as a legal right. Structural barriers as well as gaps between legal norms and practice still exist. Therefore, broader attention from the legal community is necessary to better ensure menstrual health rights. These gaps and challenges highlight the need for stronger legal protections to ensure the menstrual health accessibility. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9199425
- author
- Huang, Yanyan LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- JAMM07 20251
- year
- 2025
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- language
- English
- id
- 9199425
- date added to LUP
- 2025-06-17 16:34:23
- date last changed
- 2025-06-17 16:34:23
@misc{9199425,
abstract = {{Menstrual health is essential for people who menstruate to fully participate in daily life and social activities. It is also a fundamental human right that closely impacts the realization of other rights such as right to non-discrimination and education. In recent years, there has been increasing attention to menstrual health on both the international and national levels. However, significant barriers in accessing menstrual products, services and information persist. Ensuring menstrual health is an important step in advancing human rights protection, and integrating menstrual health into the right to health framework helps clarify state obligations and strengthen accountability.
This thesis examines the extent to which existing international and national legal frameworks recognize menstrual health as part of the right to health and identifies challenges that hinder the enforcement of state obligations regarding menstrual health accessibility. Building on the analysis, it proposes feasible legal and policy reforms on both international and national levels to support the effective realization of menstrual health accessibility.
This thesis focuses on the Accessibility element of the AAAQ framework (Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability and Quality), and is structured by its four dimensions as analytical tools: non-discrimination, physical accessibility, economic accessibility and information accessibility along with other issues related to enforcement and implementation. These dimensions, combined with a human rights-based approach are applied throughout the analysis to examine both the normative recognition and the practical enforcement of menstrual health as part of the right to health.
The findings reveal that despite been increasingly recognized through interpretive instruments and soft law, binding legal frameworks remain underdeveloped and menstrual health has not yet been systematically established as a legal right. Structural barriers as well as gaps between legal norms and practice still exist. Therefore, broader attention from the legal community is necessary to better ensure menstrual health rights. These gaps and challenges highlight the need for stronger legal protections to ensure the menstrual health accessibility.}},
author = {{Huang, Yanyan}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Menstrual Health and Human Rights: Legal Frameworks for Ensuring Accessibility}},
year = {{2025}},
}