Statelessness Working Paper Series 2016/04 punishable by harsh fines or imprisonment for up to 10 years according to Myanmar Criminal Law, Section 188.53 There remains a dearth of statistics pertaining to maternal mortality in Rakhine State as a result of abortions, however, an assessment shared with Fortify Rights reveals that 14.3 per cent of Rohingya women in Northern Rakhine have undergone at least one abortion and 26 per cent of those have had multiple abortions due to the restrictions on child birth; these figures are likely to be significantly higher in reality.54 4.2 The right to reproductive freedoms (ii): The Population Control Healthcare Bill The two child policy, allowed to thrive amongst the stateless Rohingya, has been compounded by a recently passed law entitled The Population Control Healthcare Bill. The bill is one of four in a package of “Race and Religion Protection Laws” introduced in Myanmar’s parliament in November 2014.55 The Bill instructs the government to “organise married couples to practice birth spacing” in which women must have a “36 month interval between one child birth and another”.56 It also permits local state governments to request a presidential order to limit reproductive rates if they believe there to be an ‘imbalance between population and resources’, a high level of ‘food insufficiency,’ or a significant amount of ‘low socio-economic indicators’ to warrant an invocation of this law.57 How these methods will be enforced in practice remains largely absent from local Myanmar coverage on this issue. The Population Control Healthcare Bill creates a legal basis for discrimination through coercive and uneven applications of birth control policies and differing standards of care for different communities. The new Bill will compound the disparities of reproductive health already felt within Myanmar, where women located in rural areas of Eastern Myanmar, particularly in the Shan district, also struggle to have an effective realisation of reproductive rights even as citizens of the state.58 Without citizenship, the Myanmar government has placed Rohingya women in a particularly vulnerable position for systemic violations and degradations of their reproductive health. For instance, having legal recognition as a citizen would arm Rohingya women with the judicial leverage to pursue provision 36 of Chapter Eight of the Myanmar Constitution, namely, the right to apply to the Supreme Court if their domestic rights have been ignored and undermined. This would permit them to hold the state to account for violating provisions 4, 7 and 9, namely that the state shall not discriminate based on sex, that the state will permit mothers to enjoy rights as prescribed by law and that nothing shall be detrimental to the personal freedoms of any citizen.59 However, whilst the Rohingya remain stateless, their capacity to use the law for health right protection remains virtually impossible. 4.3 The right to access healthcare services: The restriction of movement policy Having outlined the unethical policies enforced by Myanmar regarding reproductive rights, the next area of analysis will centre on the prohibition of free movement. The government of Myanmar has a long implemented a restrictive movement policy upon the Rohingya which prohibits them from travelling within or between townships without local authority authorisation. In order to get this they must obtain travel-authorisation Form Number 4 from township authorities, at least seven days prior to domestic travel; the legal foundation of this remains unclear.60 This policy is in direct breach of 53 Fortify Rights, ‘Policies of Persecution: Ending Abusive State Policies Against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar (2014) Ibid. 55 Irrawaddy Online, ‘Union Parliament Passes Population Control Bill’ (2015); ABC News Online, ‘Myanmar population control bill signed into law despite concerns it could be used to persecute minorities’ (2015) 56 Human Rights Watch (HRW), ‘Burma: Reject Discriminatory Population Bill’ (2015) 57 Irrawaddy Online, ‘Union Parliament Passes Population Control Bill’ (2015) 58 Burma Medical Association, National Health and Education Committee, ‘Diagnosis: Critical Health and Human Rights in Eastern Burma’ (2010) 59 Myanmar Constitution (2008) Chapter VIII: Citizenship, Fundamental Rights and Duties of Citizens 60 Fortify Rights, ‘Policies of Persecution: Ending Abusive State Policies Against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar (2014) 8 54