o National Human Rights Commission of Korea expressed its opinion to Ministers of the Interior and Safety and Health and Welfare to consider gender equality when pursuing policies to encourage overcome low birth-rate and demographic cliff.
o The Ministry of Health and Welfare continued to carry out policies to encourage birth giving including devising a Five-year Plan for Low Birth Rate and Aged Society based on the Framework Act on Low Birth Rate in an Ageing Society enacted in 2005. According to the recent press release of the Ministry, it plans to make an amendment to the Act in order to strengthen the role and status of the Committee on Low Birth Rate in Ageing Society and to increase participation of private sector. This is part of effort to suggest a new roadmap and agenda on related policies. In order to refrain from making mistakes that the former Ministry made including the Childbirth Map, gender equality has to be taken into account including balancing the number of man and woman in composition of the Committee.
o The former Ministry of Government Administration Affairs opened the Childbirth Map in Korea(birth.korea.go.kr) in December only to shut it down in few hours because of the
criticism from the public that the Map is based on a perspective which views woman only as a tool to give a birth. Indeed, the map indicated the number of woman in childbearing age in every district and ranked the region according to the number of child birth, which did not based on a gender sensitive perspective.
o In addition, in February last year, one researcher of the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, a state-run research
institute, attributed low birth rate to increasing economic participation of woman which created quite a stir in the country. NHRCK in the UPR report submitted to the UN HRC in March pointed out that the view that attributes low birth rate to an individual or woman has to change.
o The reason behind the low birth rate in Korea is social atmosphere that discriminates women in pregnancy or pose burden of childrearing only on women and lack of social
foundation which encourages childbirth. According to the GGI announced by the WEF, Korea ranked 116th among 114 countries in terms of gender equality in 2016.
O Taking these into consideration, NHRCK recommended to the Ministers of the Interior and Safety and Health and Welfare that it is desirable to carry out analysis and evaluation on the impact of policies related to childbirth on gender equality and ensure guarantee of gender equality in pursuing related policies.
