SEXUAL HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS A legal and ... - The ICHRP

B. METHODOLOGY
In keeping with the main aim of the Project on Sexual Health and Human Rights to focus on
authoritative standards, this review relied on primary legal documents – statutes and
judgments from the research countries. This review is based on an exhaustive survey of key
country legislations; this includes Constitutions, criminal codes, personal laws, social
legislation related to women’s empowerment, health laws and special legislations.
Government policies are included in the review only where particularly relevant and reliable
as an indication of state practice.
The review also documents and analyses key judicial decisions from the research countries.
Thailand was the only country where the researchers were unable to obtain any reliable
translations or even summaries of key decisions. While the decisions of higher courts are
mostly relied on as representing the highest law of the land, in some cases lower court
judgments have been included, where they are particularly demonstrative of a good or [bad]
practice or as indicative of disagreements within the judicial system on the content of human
rights related to sexual health. To the extent possible, the authors have attempted to have their
country analysis cross-checked with local experts, though this was only achieved for the
reviews of Bangladesh and Thailand.
It has been important to do some background reading on the different jurisdictions to
understand the hierarchy of court structures, the binding nature of decisions and to understand
various aspects of judicial review and law reform. For this the researchers relied on academic
or research articles, country reports to the various United Nations Treaty bodies and reports
of key national and international human rights organisations.
In an attempt to illustrate the positive role that law can play in the context of health generally
and sexual health specifically, the report focuses mainly on examples of statutory and case
law (and in some situations, policies) that have strengthened sexual health on the basis of a
human rights framework. However, in order to describe legal environments that are
conspicuous examples of rights violations or to illustrate the progression in jurisdictions
towards rights-based law, the report also dwells at times on examples of rights.
It is important to recognise that the research countries as part of the WHO’s SEARO region
are grouped together only because of WHO country groupings and not because they share
any common historical, cultural, legal or other characteristics. As an example, the research
countries even fall into different political regional groupings with Indonesia and Thailand
being members of the Association of South East Nations or ASEAN, while India, Nepal,
Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
or SAARC. As a result this Report is cautious in (and often refrains from)
identifying trends in the “region”.
The researchers were able to obtain official English versions of judgments and statutes from
most of the research countries either through official government websites or local contacts
and where this was not available, unofficial English translations of judgments and statutes
were obtained and cross checked for accuracy to the extent possible. Where the authors have
relied on unofficial translations, this has been specifically pointed out in the report.
In particular, key sources for the research countries included:
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