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Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
DAWN's second substantive global analysis, Reproductive Rights and Population: Feminist Voices from the South, was produced for the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in 1994. The analysis illustrated DAWN's niche role in providing historical analysis, conceptual clarity and strategic direction to organizations working to secure gains for women in the areas of sexual and reproductive health and rights and development. It broke new ground by placing the issues of population and reproductive health and rights within a broader development framework that is informed by feminist political economy, holistic, sustainable and empowering for women. With the interface of neocons and neolibs in global politics that result to intolerance and limitations on a number of human rights, DAWN's work has also focused on the need to surface and interlink sexual rights issues more prominently in its south-based social equality-political democracy-economic justice analytical frame.
SRHR Analysis Team: Angela Collet and SRHR-MDGs-Poverty Global Research Group
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On the Importance of Gender in All MDGs by Marina Durano and Gita Sen
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A big challenge is integrating messy social issues—gender, caste, ethnicity—into analysis, policies, and programming in health or, on this occasion, the Millennium Development Goals 4, 5, 6. These issues do not lend themselves easily to resolution with technological fixes. These issues also make the necessary act of prioritization difficult. The ICPD Program of Action shows us ways of integrating these messy social issues but along the way, its implementation got lost. There was fragmentation of approaches and initiatives; lack of focused leadership or resources. Follow-through was not institutionalized in the process of implementation. The inability to integrate “messy social issues” has meant that there is a default component to health care provision and it is that women become the default health care system.
Some of these messy social issues have to do with discrimination, stigma and criminalization. The human rights framework is especially helpful in dealing with these. There are a lot of work being done here by SRHR activists. Paying attention to the “messy social issues” also means that we contribute to building secular state structures, upon whom we have come to rely upon to deliver services and fulfil human rights obligations. For one of the MDG 3 indicators, it is in these secular state structures that we hope to see more women in decision-making positions.
Overall, it is important to look at the continuum of health care services provision within health care systems. The health care system is part of an even broader set of institutions for development for improving well-being. One set of development institutions is financing, both from external sources or through domestic resource mobilization. According to my colleague in DAWN, Gita Sen, “many developing countries depend on external funding from donors. She noted that the extent of this dependence varies widely but is especially marked in respect of health in sub Saharan Africa. Recent estimates suggest that health accounts for about one-seventh of total official development assistance (ODA), and about half of the health assistance goes to Africa. Vertical programs account for 15-20% of health aid, although this varies from year to year. However, a substantial proportion of the expenditure is off budget, or even excluded from the balance of payments, despite the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. Where this happens, the recipient country's Ministry of Finance has little, if any, control over how the money is allocated and spent. The positive side of money being excluded from balance of payments and budget is that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cannot ‘get their hands on it’.”[1] This was a major point of debate around 2004 -2005, when there was a strong demand for scaling up of resources. I raise this in the context of MDG 8. We also need to integrate messy social issues in macroeconomics, if we are to make decisions around generating and distributing resources or conversely cutting down and re-allocating resources, whether these are for HIV/AIDS or for other health concerns.
There is a small caveat on the strategy of arguing that promoting gender equality will enhance performance of all MDGs. We need to be careful in the sense that the burden of proof might fall on us to demonstrate this exactly. That’s quite a heavy burden when causalities are debated upon on a regular basis. Causalities are fairly complex when it comes to messy social issues. It would be nice if we valued gender equality because it will improve our well being – full stop.
Source: Intervention made by Marina Durano at Achieving Interdependent MDGs: Creating Synergies Amongst Advocates Side-Event sponsored by UNAIDS, 14 June 2010. This article is also available in DAWN Informs June 2010 Issue
[1]In Sexualities and reproductivities: Strengthening the quality of global research and advocacy. Report on Ford Foundation Convening Global Sexuality Research and Advocacy Portfolio, 14-15 April 2009
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DAWN Development Debates: Presentations on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
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Human Rights Challenges Including Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights by Wanda Nowicka
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Gender Identity, Sexuality and Feminism by Ros Petchesky
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Positioning Sexuality in Holistic Development through Interlinkages by Angela Collet
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The last decade has witnessed major steps forward in legitimising a more holistic approach to “development”, which has led to efforts that address inequality and poverty through a multi dimensional approach, taking into account empowerment, freedom, well-being and human rights. In parallel, political and policy advocacy around sexuality issues and related areas has evidently become more visible both at the national and global levels, as exemplified by the international debates on HIV-AIDS, sexual rights and more recently, the articulation of human rights principles to tackle discrimination and violence related to sexual orientation and gender identity (Yogjakarta Principles; December 2008 GA Declaration). While one could think that aspects relating to sexuality would come into this debate as one of the key dimensions of human development, main obstacles remain, which make it difficult to more fully incorporate sexuality as development priority.
This “silence” is not surprising as sexuality has always been controversial and triggers many conflicts at both societal and policy levels. In the last decade, moral conservatism has gained space in the international development arena as illustrated by millions of dollars being invested by the Bush administration to promote abstinence or initiatives aimed to deny young people access to information and contraceptive methods, to attack abortion rights or to restrict funding for organizations that support sex workers rights. For reasons of politics or religion, these forces oppose the granting of sexual rights and freedoms to those who fail to conform to their prescribed norms. These trends are contested at all levels by sexual rights activism that is attaining unprecedented levels of global-local connectivity. (Read more by downloading document)
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Integrating a Gender Perspective in the Work of the Human Rights Council and Its Special Procedures by Angela Collet
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The lack of interconnections across human rights areas can be seen in the Human Rights Council mandates that review the situation of human rights in relation to economic and financial trends but that never adopt a gender perspective. None of the reports recently presented to the Council on the effects of economic reform policies and foreign debt or transnational corporations appreciate the value of the categories of “gender” or “women” in examining the social dynamics of these issues. This is in stark contrast to the ongoing review process of the UN Financing for Development Conference, where the NGO Women’s Working Group, in which DAWN participates, has systematically underlined the impact of unequal gender power relations in areas such as domestic resource mobilization, foreign direct investments and private capital flows, trade, international financial and technical cooperation, and debt.
Other areas of the Council, in which DAWN is engaged, that demand gender analyses include special mandates on critical ecological concerns such as toxic and dangerous products and wastes; the right to food; access to safe drinking water and sanitation. The Council can effectively contribute toward illuminating the linkages between the devastating health and livelihood effects of environmental degradation, the increasing impoverishment of women, and human rights violations worldwide. (Read more by downloading document)
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Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and the Millenium Development Agenda by Sonia Correa
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DAWN is currently undertaking a study that is focused on analyzing how SRHR policies and MDG/poverty alleviation policies are framed and integrated into the national policy architecture. The research which seeks to find out what gaps and contradictions in policy discourses, implementation and impact might exist, is being undertaken in India, Mexico and Nigeria. In this first phase of the research process, the following were accomplished: a) setting-up of a web-based communication portal to facilitate better communication and information exchanges amongst the researchers; b) conduct of country level research initiatives and consultations; and c) convening of a Researchers Meeting in Rio de Janeiro in March 2009.
Launched in March 2008, a web-based communication portal was created to serve as the virtual site for communication and information exchange amongst the members of the Research Team. Also designed to function as a virtual library where all relevant literature and research documentation may be uploaded, the web-based communication portal continues to be an important site for a) mobilizing the Research Team; b) facilitating discussions and collective learning; and c) organizing the Research Team’s work more effectively in order to realize the full potential of decentralized and multi-location working mechanisms subscribed to by the Research Project. Meanwhile, across country-level research efforts, activities were primarily devoted to: a) reviewing, adjusting and adapting research guidelines to contextual and spatial specificities; b) consolidating the country-level research teams; c) gathering and selecting key policy documents pertinent to the research; d) conducting preliminary analyses on materials compiled; e) identifying key informants to the research; and, in some cases f) conducting interviews with identified key informants.
Constituting the research team are: Sonia Correa, DAWN Global Research Coordinator for SRHR, Alessandra Chacham (Brazil), Ngukwase Surma and Mary Okpe (Nigeria), Renu Khanna and Ranjani Murthy (India), and Erika Troncoso Saavedra (Mexico). The team used the opportunity of the Rio meeting for sharing updates and a discussion of the preliminary findings of country research teams that involved a) revisiting research guidelines; and b) rearticulating and defining language used by the research project to strike clarity and consistency in the analytical and methodological trajectories of the research. It was also announced at the meeting that Carol Ruiz (Philippines) will soon assume the role of research coordinator while Sonia moves to the role of Research Adviser.
Linked to the research are activities related to ICPD+15 that includes participation in the 2009 Session of the UN Commission on Population and Development that marked the 15th Anniversary of the Cairo Conference where governments adopted a resolution entitled “The contribution of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development to the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals”; the writing up of a short ICPD policy document to be released later this year; and participation in the NGO Forum to mark the 15th anniversary of ICPD that will take place in Berlin later this year. As well, since March 2007, DAWN has been engaged in joint civil society advocacy and lobby efforts towards the integration of gender and sexuality related issues within the framework of the Human Rights Council. As part of this effort, one of the themes that this civil society group has been working on is on the intersectional issues of maternal mortality and human rights. Representing DAWN in the HRC is Angela Collet.
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