(2017) 1 African Human Rights Yearbook 87 urges states to take appropriate measures to prevent women from dying during pregnancy or childbirth. The UNHRC has also adopted a Technical Guidance on maternal mortality, where it urges states to adopt appropriate laws and policies to ensure safe motherhood and prevent women dying during childbirth and pregnancy.25 At the regional level, all the three major human rights instruments; the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Charter),26 the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (African Children’s Rights Charter)27 and the African Women’s Rights Protocol, contain provisions on the right to health, including access to maternal health care services. Article 14 of the African Women’s Rights Protocol guarantees women’s rights to health care, including sexual and reproductive health care. More importantly, article 14(2) enjoins states to (a) provide adequate, affordable and accessible health services, including information, education and communication programmes to women especially those in rural areas; (b) establish and strengthen existing pre-natal, delivery and post-natal health and nutritional services for women during pregnancy and while they are breast-feeding. The relevance of this provision to addressing maternal deaths in the region is discussed below. According to Hunt and de Mesquita, maternal health care services must be understood broadly as an entitlement to an available, accessible, adequate, effective, well-resourced, culturally acceptable and integrated health system.28 They further reasoned that some of the critical services that must be accessible to women in this integrated health system so as to prevent maternal deaths include: emergency obstetric care, a skilled birth attendant, education and information on sexual and reproductive health, safe and legal abortion services, and other sexual and reproductive health care services, such as family planning or contraceptive services. Hunt and de Mesquita have further examined how the elements of the right to health as developed by the ICESCR Committee can be applicable specifically to maternal mortality and noted that availability requires states to ensure sufficient number of qualified health care 25 Human Rights Council, Practices in adopting a human rights-based approach to eliminate preventable maternal mortality and human rights. 18th Session A/HRC/18/ 27; 8 July 2011. 26 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights OAU Doc CAB/LEG/67/3/Rev 5, adopted by the Organisation of African Unity, 27 June 1981, entered into force 21 October 1986. 27 African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, OAU Doc CAB/LEG/24.0/ 49 (1990) (entered into force 29 November 1999). 28 P Hunt & JB de Mesquita Reducing maternal mortality: the contribution of the right to the highest attainable standard of health (2010) 6.