While law and policy on abortion is formed at the national level and access should be provided by the state, there are situations where international intervention into national abortion law and abortion care is necessary. This chapter explores two types of such interventions: human rights-based interventions, whereby international and regional bodies monitor state compliance with particular human rights treaties to provide recommendations or formally binding decisions, and humanitarian interventions, whereby in situations of crisis and conflict the international community intervenes to ensure that women have access to reproductive health services.

International human rights-based interventions in abortion have provided opinion, judgments and clarity on issues such as access to abortion, safety of care and interpretation of law. What the international sphere has refrained from doing, however, is to guarantee a right to abortion for women who choose it, as an aspect of equality and selfdetermination (Zampas and Gher, 2008). This has focused abortion within a physical health and safety discourse, rather than one of equality and agency. Since the mid-1990s, international and regional human rights instruments, treaty bodies and commissions have established that lack of access to abortion violates human rights norms in a number of circumstances. Most importantly, this body of interpretation provides a legitimate framework for governments, civil society actors and activists to either enact or lobby for abortion law reform within states. Use of human rights interpretations on abortion can be seen in cases and national law reform in countries as diverse as Colombia, Nepal, Rwanda and Spain (Fine et al, 2017).

Conflict and humanitarian crises continue to affect millions of people per year. Women and girls are disproportionality affected by conflict and crisis, suffering the same injustices as men and boys but with added layers often arising because of their sexual and reproductive capacities. The UN reports that there are currently over 128 million people worldwide in need of humanitarian assistance (UNOCHA, 2017). Of those, a quarter are women and girls between the ages of 15 and 49, and one in five of these women and girls is likely to be pregnant.