• Public health vs rights based approaches

Public health vs rights based approaches

This article from the journal Health and Human Rights looks at the interpretation and practice of sexual rights following the Beijing Declaration and Programme of Action, focusing on the nine member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The author finds that most countries in the region recognise the links between gender discrimination and inequality, particularly sexual violence, and women’s greater vulnerability to HIV transmission. Some also recognise the problem of unequal power relations between men and women, but few provide strategies to address it, and most remain ambivalent about shared sexual decision-making. Sexuality and sexual orientation are also notably absent from sexual rights discourse in the region.

The article calls for more attention to be given to the links between lack of sexual rights and poverty. It also advocates a shift in focus from the absence of rights, with the emphasis on denial of sexuality and on protection of women, to the positive acceptance of sexual pleasure as a component of rights. It concludes that the promotion of women’s social and economic status is fundamental to the realisation of sexual rights. It further argues that sexual rights can become a means not only to defeat the spread of HIV and AIDS but also to promote social justice.

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