Abu Dhabi: On World Health Day 2025, the United Nations Network on Migration (UNNM), with the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a member of its Executive Committee, reaffirms its commitment to ensuring that every pregnant migrant woman, mother, and newborn has access to essential health care, regardless of migration status. This priority aligns with the WHO global action plan on promoting the health of refugees and migrants and is upheld in the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration.
According to Emirates News Agency, in its newly released statement, UNNM, together with WHO and its partner organisations, issued a call to action to urgently remove barriers that prevent migrant women and newborns from accessing essential prenatal and postnatal care. The statement emphasizes the critical importance of the first years of life, from birth to a child’s second birthday, for long-term health and development. Access to quality prenatal and postnatal care is essential to ensure safe pregnancies, healthy births, and strong early growth. However, migrant women and newborns face significant barriers during this crucial period, often due to the lack of legal identity and heightened health risks.
The statement highlights that migration can disrupt the continuity of care, leaving women without access to maternal and newborn health services. On this World Health Day, the United Nations Network on Migration reaffirms the commitment upheld in the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) to ensuring every pregnant migrant woman, mother, and newborn receives adequate health care, regardless of migratory status.
The statement further points out that migrant women, particularly those in transit or with irregular status, face heightened risks of pregnancy-related complications or unwanted pregnancies, sometimes due to sexual violence. Some may give birth in immigration centres without adequate prenatal and postnatal care or in settings where health care is fragmented or unavailable. The fear of detention or deportation can also prevent undocumented women from seeking medical attention, including in cases of sexual violence requiring emergency services, further endangering their lives and those of their newborns.
The UNNM warns that no woman should be forced to choose between her safety and her right to health care. A mother and child’s survival, health, and legal identity should not depend on migration status. While migrant women and children are not inherently less healthy than host populations, they face systemic barriers – legal, financial, linguistic, and social – that restrict access to essential health care. Without inclusive policies and responsive health systems, these disparities will continue to endanger lives and fuel cycles of inequality for generations.
The United Nations Network on Migration calls on Member States to build inclusive health systems that guarantee uninterrupted maternal and newborn care along migration routes by ensuring birth registration for all children, guaranteeing universal access to adequate emergency sexual and reproductive health services, and integrating maternal and newborn health care into migration policies. It also emphasizes the importance of strengthening culturally and linguistically inclusive maternal and newborn care, investing in gender-responsive data and research, and enhancing regional cooperation to ensure continuity of care.
The first WHO World Report on the Health of Refugees and Migrants has provided critical evidence on the systemic barriers faced by migrant populations. Advancing maternal and newborn health is not just a human right and humanitarian imperative – it is also a fundamental commitment to public health and sustainable development and a shared responsibility.