**1. Introduction**

It is at present 40 years since the Alma-Ata Declaration on primary health care [1]. Grounded in certain human-rights norms and public-health principles, the declaration urged governments and other actors to ensure the attainment of maternal and child health-care through primary health care by the year 2000. However, despite the significant reductions, women and children are still dying of inadequate health-care services, particularly in vulnerable communities. In our world, the majority of deaths occur in relation to maternal and under-five child mortality. Needlessly, the causes for most of the deaths are both treatable and preventable. It is likewise discovered that increases in maternal and child health are not shared equitably and that between and within countries, health inequities or gaps have widened [2].

In order for governments to scale up primary health care and thereby to narrow health inequities, among other things, the declaration indicates the importance of universal health coverage, national health plans, and a health workforce that includes community health workers [2].

Following Alma-Ata various attempts have been constructed to delineate some of the right-to-health features of health systems. Acutely aware of the centrality of a human rights-based approach (HRBA) to health to the creation of equitable health systems, Gunilla et al., for instance, have attempted to identify some of these to include legal recognition, standards, participation, comprehensive national planning, accountability, equity, equality and nondiscrimination, and respect for cultural difference and quality and proposed 72 indicators that reflect some of these features [3].

Maternal and child health is equally a central challenge of the Ethiopian health system, and health gain disparities concerning these categories of persons exist within the various parts of the country. This chapter examines the degree to which the Ethiopian health system (1) promotes awareness of the complementary relation between the Ethiopian health system and the right to maternal and child health; (2) selects a manageable set of indicators to assess the degree to which a health system includes some of the right-to-health features; (3) increases accountability in relation to the Ethiopian health system and the right to maternal and child health; and (4) deepens the understanding of the important role of indicators in relation to the progressive realization of the right to maternal and child health.

For the discussion on the human-rights features of maternal and child health and measuring Ethiopian compliance of its obligation to the right to health, this chapter relies mainly on current literature, General Comment 14, the Alma-Ata Declaration, and elements of the World Health Organization (WHO) building blocks of a good health system, the Convention of the Right of the Child, General Comments 3 and 4 of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, and the requirement that health facilities and services are available, accessible, and culturally appropriate—respectful of the culture of those concerned— and of good quality [4–11]. Further, it draws an examination of relevant Ethiopian laws, polices, plans and institutional mechanisms. Before discussing these features, the chapter attempts to highlight the conceptual framework of a HRBA.
