Millions of girls miss school each month when they menstruate, as their families cannot afford sanitary pads or tampons – something that a Geneva-based diplomatic effort is seeking to address.

Ambassador Matthew Wilson of Barbados described improving access to menstrual as a “global moral imperative” at a meeting of diplomats this week. 

“[Caribbean] surveys show that one in four girls have missed school due to lot of menstrual products, and over 30% of low-income households struggle to purchase them regularly,” Wilson told the meeting, hosted by the Permanent Missions of Barbados, Canada, and Malawi to the United Nations in Geneva, the Sanitation and Hygiene Fund (SHF), and the Center for Health Diplomacy and Inclusion (CeHDI).

“The unmet need for menstrual hygiene products in Africa is very high,“ said Zimbabwe’s  Ambassador Even Mlilo, quoting recent research which showed that almost 75% of women and girls lacked access to these products in Burkina Faso, 70% in Ethiopia, and 65% in Uganda. 

Tax codes

One of the first steps towards ensuring affordable and accessible menstrual hygiene products is getting a separate tax code for these products.

Currently, menstrual products are lumped with disposable nappies and other products deemed luxury items, which has made it difficult to implement tax breaks, speakers told the meeting.

The World Customs Organization (WCO) assigns Harmonized System (HS) codes to goods, enabling tracking of their use as well as any taxes and tariffs levied.

“Menstrual products don’t have a dedicated HS category. Single-use products are grouped together with diapers, wipes and other tissues, making it very difficult to even understand the types of tarriffs that these products are subject to, because they’re not classified,” said the  Sanitation and Hygiene Fund’s Adrian Douglas.

The WCO meets every five years to revise the HS classification, with a meeting planned for next year, and the Canadian government has been leading efforts to get an HS code for menstrual products.

International standards

Another avenue for diplomatic pressure is ensuring that the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) sets standards for menstrual products. 

“Menstrual products do not have an ISO standard yet, and it’s caused all kinds of challenges  in importation, challenges in ensuring quality, and it’s been one of the barriers that has prevented new innovations from reaching users,” said Douglas.

“There are heavy metals present in nearly all the menstrual products that are on the market today,” he added, pointing out that getting ISO standards on these products was expected by 2027.

“Today, in low and middle income countries alone, the annual value of the menstrual product market is $28 billion. So there’s a lot of convincing arguments to be made to include private sector to attract the additional investment.”

Afripads, a social enterprise based in Uganda that is making and distributing sanitary products, has reached seven million women and girls across 40 countries in the last 15 years, Afripads CEO Michelle Tjeenk Willink told the meeting.

“One of our main focuses is that if you tackle menstrual health, girls miss far less school and are more likely to graduate, more likely to continue to be financially active, economically active in work. So we always track [impact] in terms of school days, and we’ve given back more than 20 million school days to girls,” said Tjeenk Willink.

Import tariffs

“The Caribbean is extremely import dependent, particularly for menstrual hygiene products,” Wilson said. 

“Any shifts in global trade dynamics, production costs, and supply chain disruptions have immediate and significant consequences on the affordability and access of these products in our region. 

“So when import costs rise due to tariffs elsewhere, due to factors entirely outside of our control, prices increase at the community level, potentially undermining years of progress that have been made to reduce period poverty.”

While Barbados, Guyana, St Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago have removed VAT or reduced taxes on menstrual products, this has not been enough to guarantee lower prices.

“While VAT is being removed in many countries, not all taxes are removed. There are other kinds of taxes, like excise taxes, that are still applied,” said Ambassador Leslie Ramsammy of Guyana.

Earlier this year, Guyana removed all taxes on feminine hygiene products, but the country is still affected by tariffs and import taxes.

Wilson urged his diplomatic colleagues to engage WCO, World Trade Organization (WTO) and other multilateral forums “to ensure that menstrual products are clearly delineated, have clear HS codes ascribed to them, are included as essential goods and that they’re considered for exemption from escalating tariffs.

“This is critical, not just for our region, but for millions of women and girls cannot afford to bear the burden of trade policies beyond their control.”

Malawi’s Ambassador Caroline Bwanali-Mussa agreed that “some tax reforms alone have not been enough”. 

Malawi eliminated duty and excise taxes on pad and menstrual cups in 2022 but this “did not immediately translate into lower prices”, she said.

Instead, Bwanali-Mussa said that “harmonised trade systems can unlock dignified, affordable access to menstrual products for all who need them”.

She also reminded the meeting of a 2024 United Nations Human Rights Council resolution which called on member states to ensure universal access to affordable menstrual products, including by “eliminating or reducine all taxes on menstrual products” and supporting those “living in economic vulnerability with free or affordable options”.

Image Credits: CeHDI.