• Public health vs rights based approaches

Public health vs rights based approaches

This paper, from Sexuality Research and Social Policy, explores the ways in which globalisation impacts upon sexuality and gender, focusing on HIV, sexual identity and human and sexual rights in the developing world. The author outlines how the effects of globalisation, such as increased mobility and urbanisation, means that traditional ways of regulating and controlling sexuality are changing and people are creating new forms of sexual behaviour and norms. However, these changes can be both liberating and oppressive, as increased mobility and migration leads to new forms of inequality.

The author goes onto highlight how questions of sexuality are becoming more central to debates about international human rights, due in part to HIV and AIDS. The impact of HIV demonstrates that the lines between private and public are increasingly blurred. While some governments address HIV through abstinence or fidelity, the nature of human sexuality means that these will not be successful. The author argues that, in the long term, effective prevention means access to and knowledge of condoms, acknowledgement of sex work and homosexuality and cooperation with those involved in such behaviours, stigmatised or not. [adapted from author]

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