Legal obligation for promoting safe motherhood for Roma women in Bulgaria: A task for Sisyphus

The thesis endeavours to place safe motherhood in a human rights framework and to consider the questions such a framework raises about governmental accountability and action for minority women's reproductive health with a special attention to the position of Roma women in Bulgaria. It specifically argues that the right to equality is the basis of ensuring Roma women safe motherhood and the government must act to eliminate the intersection of race and gender discrimination in the reproductive health sector. The current Bulgarian approach to equality is a formal one and it fails to protect the most vulnerable groups in the society like Roma women who do not fit the dominant model. In this respect, the thesis proposes an introduction of a comprehensive reproductive health policy in Bulgaria, which relies on affirmative programs that take into account the “right” to safe motherhood of Roma women.