In depth I  Sexual and reproductive rights
Whose sexuality counts? Poverty, participation and sexual rights
Source: Institute of Development Studies - IDS
Sexuality is a vital aspect of development. It affects people’s livelihoods and security, their wellbeing, and sometimes their very survival. Sexual rights are a precondition for reproductive rights and for gender equality. Lack of sexual rights affects heterosexual majorities as well as sexual minorities –lesbians and gay men, bisexuals, transgendered and intersex people– who are so often denied basic human rights and subjected to violence and exclusion. April 2008, Henry Armas.[see more]
 
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The term "reproductive rights" is relatively recent: it was coined during the International Meeting on Women and Health in Amsterdam (1984). This event can be seen as the starting point of a long struggle waged by women's movements worldwide to expand the scope of the concept of human rights.

Almost a decade later, in 1993, at the World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna, participant States agreed to regard any violation of the specific rights of women as a human rights violation. The initiatives and participation of women in this Conference prompted a major shift in human rights theory, as at that point it was recognized that human rights can be enjoyed in private as well as in public, and thus can be violated in both spheres. In Vienna human rights were defined as universal, interdependent and indivisible.

Since the Vienna Conference women have been involved in several international events, contributing their research, proposals and demands, with the goal of consolidating and furthering what has been achieved thus far: Cairo in 1994, and Beijing in 1995, besides their engagement in regional and international networks and NGO forums, among others.

Throughout this process, the concept of human rights has undergone revisions and expansions. The agenda had been limited to abuses committed by the State, ignoring other spheres. Thus, the need to expand and redefine the social contract was posed -a contract from which women have been historically excluded, both in terms of its definitions and their condition as political subjects. Difference has always been construed as deficiency, and the result has always been inequality, an inequality requiring protection.

A lot of ground has been covered and progress continues to be made, but the road has not been free from obstacles. The Third Special Session of the UN General Assembly, known as "Women 2000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace in the 21st Century", took stock of the advances made in the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action's recommendations (WPA or Beijing + 5). There, tensions arose when conservative groups tried to prevent the final document from being adopted.

In spite of the difficulties, Beijing +5 closed an intense cycle of legitimation and visibility for the debate over unsafe abortion at a global level. Since then tensions have tended to be expressed domestically. International agreements bind signatory States, but that is not enough. Countries must pass the laws that are necessary to enable the enforcement of the commitments undertaken, which signatory countries still fail to observe for the most part.

Today there are new global political circumstances which affect the debate over reproductive health and pregnancy termination. The US Congress has pressed to include a conditionality clause with respect to development cooperation funds, aimed to prevent organizations that are in any way connected with pregnancy termination from accessing such funds. Financing from USAID is limited by this conditionality, having a regressive impact on the politics of the recipient countries of this agency's funds. This pressure is furthered by anti-abortion groups and conservative sectors of certain religions, thus placing at the top of the agenda the debate over laicism and democracy and the need to reassess the relationship between religion and State.

In this context, Uruguay's Reproductive Health Protection Bill -already approved by the lower chamber of parliament- marks an important step forward. Its significance lies in its holistic approach to reproductive health and in the fact that it promotes discussion on a regional level despite the current political climate describe above.

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 Vienna 1993
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 Cairo 1994
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 Beijing 1995
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