Health Rights of Women Assessment Instrument (HeRWAI), The

The Health Rights of Women Assessment Instrument (HeRWAI) aims to be a practical, strategic tool to enhance lobbying activities for better implementation of women's health rights. It contains guidance on how to implement a rights-based analysis of the influence of policies on women's health rights. Through a HeRWAI analysis, organisations can link what actually happens with what should happen according to the human rights obligations of a country.

The analysis includes local, national and international influences. The HeRWAI analysis consists of six steps, which analyse a policy that influences women’s health rights. Each step consists of information and questions to guide the analysis. Explanations, examples and checklists facilitate the answering of the questions. The analysis helps produce a set of recommendations to improve the impact of the policy, as well as an action plan to lobby for adoption of the recommendations and to raise awareness about the findings of the analysis.

HeRWAI is designed for non-governmental organisations (NGOs), in particular women's organisations, health organisations and human rights organisations. It has been developed to help these groups in their advocacy efforts to make governments accountable for the implementation of women’s health rights. HeRWAI was developed by the Humanist Committee on Human Rights, in close cooperation with Naripokkho in Bangladesh, the Federation of Women Lawyers in Kenya (FIDA-Kenya), Servicio Integral para la Mujer (Si Mujer) in Nicaragua, International Women’s Rights Action Watch - Asia Pacific (IWRAW-AP) in Malaysia and Wemos in the Netherlands.