Incarcerated Women’s Right to Health: Bridging the Gap Between Policy and Reality

This article aims to investigate the impact of incarceration on women with regard to their right to health in the criminal justice system in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Despite the universal recognition of the right to health within detention facilities, it has received limited scholarly attention. There is a pressing need for research on this topic due to the identified gap in the literature concerning incarcerated women, with the available data being fragmented and insufficient in addressing the women offender’s right to health in detention settings in the region. The findings of this article indicate that the use of detention facilities as a punitive measure has a significant detrimental impact on women, resulting in additional challenges within these environments. This results in gender-based disparities and differential inequalities of treatment that are systematically imposed upon women within the prison and criminal justice systems. Despite this evidence, incarcerated women are marginalised in discussions related to criminal justice system treatment. A significant absence of concrete steps towards reforming the criminal justice system remains.