A/HRC/14/20/Add.2 responsibility of state Governments. The national Government sets the policy framework and provides financial support for maternal and child health. When the Special Rapporteur was speaking with state and national Governments, each sometimes pointed accusingly at the other. As a matter of international law, the national Government is responsible for ensuring conformity with India’s international human rights treaties, including those encompassing the right to health. Nonetheless, state Governments also have international human rights obligations. Third, there are words and actions to the contrary — and this report has been careful to acknowledge many of them — but, for the most part, maternal mortality reduction is still not a priority in India. 99. In 2007, The New Indian Express published a powerful editorial entitled “The janani betrayal”, arguing that more could, and should, be done for maternal health.59 This editorial was especially striking because maternal mortality rarely attracts public attention in India. With honourable exceptions, the media is silent on the issue. But just imagine the outcry if more than 100,000 Indians were “disappeared” every year by unlawful paramilitaries. Yet when some 100,000 women die each year during childbirth in villages, by the side of roads trying to reach medical help, and in nonfunctioning health facilities, there is scarcely a flicker of protest. Why the difference? Two uncomfortable underlying reasons have to be placed in the light of day. First, many people still see maternal deaths as natural personal tragedies about which next to nothing can be done. Of course, the data show this is nonsense; there is nothing inevitable about maternal mortality. Second, women have low social status. To be blunt, some see women as expendable. The combination of these factors is deadly, leading to complacency and half-hearted interventions. 100. In conclusion, maternal mortality reduction is not just a way of saving women’s lives and restoring India’s reputation. It is also a vehicle for establishing an effective health system from which all women, children and men will benefit. In other words, maternal mortality reduction is a way of establishing a critically important social institution: an effective, integrated, responsive health system of good quality and accessible to all. 59 22 7 December 2007. GE.10-12866