Birth is a Human Rights Issue. This declaration is the foundation of the Global Midwifery Council. Childbirth is the strong foundation upon which every healthy society grows.
The Global Midwifery Council is an international humanitarian organization of midwives and their supporters investigating birth and midwifery around the world. The council’s goal is to ensure that safe and respectful midwifery care during childbirth is available to every woman in the world.
The Global Midwifery Council analyses birth conditions worldwide to help retain, establish or reestablish midwifery care.
Philosophy
The most basic human right for every woman is the right to choose her place of birth and who will attend her. Mothers and babies do best in an environment conducive to the respect for the physiology of birth. Conscious, mother-centered midwifery has been shown to serve that need.
The Global Midwifery Council recognizes each woman’s unique spiritual, psychological and biological experience of childbirth.
Childbirth is the pivotal event in the life of each individual and is the cornerstone of a peaceful society.
Goals
Receive and respond to needs and requests about birth from around the world.
Keep a “Situation Room” where we will centralize Web-based information and analyze information about birth-related conditions globally.
Promote midwifery models that work to provide safe, humane, respectful, organic, culturally-appropriate birthing care.
Work to strengthen midwifery education, continuing education and access to an international network of experienced and aspiring midwives and supportive caregivers.
Work in association with sister midwifery organizations around the world.
Maintain a community platform for issues pertaining to childbirth.
Respond to specific educational needs and requests to help develop and support local midwifery.
Develop ways to help support midwifery globally.
Work to develop an international documentation for midwifery education, experience and skills.
Truths
Studies based on non-physiological birth are not applicable to physiological birth.
Midwives are the experts on physiological birth.
Global Midwifery Council Headquarters
Route de Vernier 94
1219 Geneva, Switzerland
[14 September 2011]
Editorial by Jan Tritten:
The birth of the Global Midwifery Council was in June of 2010 at the Home Child/Midwifery Today Conference in Moscow, Russia. It was born to change the paradigm of birth around the world. At international conferences, Midwifery Today has learned enough about midwifery and birth around the world to realize that birth itself is in deep trouble. The Global Midwifery Council (GMC) is an organization born to help make long-term changes in how mothers and babies are treated and how midwifery is carried out. We have a mission to stop inappropriate over-medicalization in birth care! Read More...
Jan Tritten
Jan Tritten is the founder and editor-in-chief of Midwifery Today magazine and a midwife who was in active practice from 1977–1989. She became a midwife in 1977 after the powerful homebirth of one of her daughters. Her mission is to make loving midwifery care the norm for birthing women and their babies throughout the world.
Birth is a Human Rights Issue. This declaration is the foundation of the Global Midwifery Council. Childbirth is the strong foundation upon which every healthy society grows.
The Global Midwifery Council is an international humanitarian organization of midwives and their supporters investigating birth and midwifery around the world. The council’s goal is to ensure that safe and respectful midwifery care during childbirth is available to every woman in the world.
The Global Midwifery Council analyses birth conditions worldwide to help retain, establish or reestablish midwifery care.
Philosophy
The most basic human right for every woman is the right to choose her place of birth and who will attend her. Mothers and babies do best in an environment conducive to the respect for the physiology of birth. Conscious, mother-centered midwifery has been shown to serve that need.
The Global Midwifery Council recognizes each woman’s unique spiritual, psychological and biological experience of childbirth.
Childbirth is the pivotal event in the life of each individual and is the cornerstone of a peaceful society.
Goals
Receive and respond to needs and requests about birth from around the world.
Keep a “Situation Room” where we will centralize Web-based information and analyze information about birth-related conditions globally.
Promote midwifery models that work to provide safe, humane, respectful, organic, culturally-appropriate birthing care.
Work to strengthen midwifery education, continuing education and access to an international network of experienced and aspiring midwives and supportive caregivers.
Work in association with sister midwifery organizations around the world.
Maintain a community platform for issues pertaining to childbirth.
Respond to specific educational needs and requests to help develop and support local midwifery.
Develop ways to help support midwifery globally.
Work to develop an international documentation for midwifery education, experience and skills.
Truths
Studies based on non-physiological birth are not applicable to physiological birth.
Midwives are the experts on physiological birth.
Global Midwifery Council Headquarters
Route de Vernier 94
1219 Geneva, Switzerland
[14 September 2011]
The birth of the Global Midwifery Council was in June of 2010 at the Home Child/Midwifery Today Conference in Moscow, Russia. It was born to change the paradigm of birth around the world. At international conferences, Midwifery Today has learned enough about midwifery and birth around the world to realize that birth itself is in deep trouble. The Global Midwifery Council (GMC) is an organization born to help make long-term changes in how mothers and babies are treated and how midwifery is carried out. We have a mission to stop inappropriate over-medicalization in birth care! Read More...
Jan Tritten
Jan Tritten is the founder and editor-in-chief of Midwifery Today magazine and a midwife who was in active practice from 1977–1989. She became a midwife in 1977 after the powerful homebirth of one of her daughters. Her mission is to make loving midwifery care the norm for birthing women and their babies throughout the world.
