NARRATIVE REPORT 2009 - The ICHRP

More documents

Recommendations

Info

International Council on Human Rights Policy - Narrative Report 2009 C. Projects in research at the start of 2010 New – Sexuality, health and human rights (134, ( 140) 1. Following publication of the Discussion Paper Sexuality and Human Rights (See section A, project 137), on July 6-7 the Council convened an expert meeting in Geneva to take advice on what further work the Council should undertake on the theme of sexuality and rights. 2. The meeting brought together a group with an unusually wide range of expertise and interests in the field. The participants themselves indicated how rare it was for them to have an opportunity to debate the issues that concern them in such a heterodox forum – and it might even be said that the meeting justified itself in those terms alone. In addition to Magdalena Sepùlveda and Robert Archer for ICHRP, the following individuals took part: Maxim Anmeghichean (Programmes Director, ILGA-Europe, Moldova); Hossam Bahgat (Director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Egypt); Codou Bop (Coordinator of GREFELS, Senegal); Widney Brown (Senior Director of International Law and Policy, Amnesty International, US/UK); Radhika Chandiramani (Executive Director of TARSHI - Talking About Reproductive and Sexual Health Issues, India); Sonia Correa (Director DAWN, Development Alternatives with Women for a new Era, Brazil); Shanthi Dairiam (founding member and former Executive Director of International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific and former expert member of the CEDAW Committee, Malaysia); Stefano Fabeni (Director, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex Initiative, Global Rights, US); Susana Fried (Senior Gender Adviser, HIV/AIDS Group at the Bureau for Development Policy, United Nations Development Programme, US); Eszter Kismodi (Human Rights Adviser of the Gender, Reproductive Rights, Sexual Health & Adolescence, Department of Reproductive Health and Research, WHO, Switzerland); Allison Jernow (Senior Legal Officer for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, International Commission of Jurists, Switzerland); Scott Long (Director, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Rights Division, Human Rights Watch, US); Alice Miller (Lecturer-in-Residence at UC Berkeley Law School, Senior Fellow at Boalt’s Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice, US); Steven R. Ratner (Bruno Simma Collegiate Professor of Law at University of Michigan Law School, US); Cynthia Rothschild (Independent Consultant and Senior Policy Adviser, Center for Women’s Global Leadership, US); Ignacio Saiz (Executive Director, Centre for Economic and Social Rights, Spain); Alejandra Sardá-Chandiramani (Mulabi - Espacio Latinoamericano de Sexualidades y Derechos, Argentina); Professor Carole Vance (Dept. of Anthropology and Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, United States); Alma Viviana Perez (First Secretary for Human Rights, Colombian Mission to the UN, Switzerland). 3. On the first day, using Sexuality and Human Rights as a point of departure, the group discussed rather freely a range of themes relevant to sexuality and human rights. On the second, the group identified options for the Council’s future research. This was an exceptionally useful session, because it required people coming from a variety of points of view to consider where our work might have the greatest shared value. A broad consensus eventually emerged that the most useful achievable project is one that would examine the legal concepts that underpin public policies regulating sexual expression and behaviour. These include such notions as “public order”, “public morals”, “public health”, and ideas of decorum, decency, appropriate dress etc. 4. The Council plans to develop a design that will address this question from a range of relevant angles. However, towards the end of 2009 and early in 2010 an alternative programme of work emerged in discussions with the World Health Organization that is both relevant to this project and provides a core information base for the research that would be involved. On the basis of a 16
International Council on Human Rights Policy - Narrative Report 2009 decisions by the Council’s Executive Board in February 2010, this new programme will be undertaken before the Council’s own project is started. New proposal (project 140). In September 2009, Magdalena Sepùlveda started detailed discussions with staff from the World Health Organization about the possibility of editing, publishing and disseminating a number of research papers that WHO has commissioned for a large programme of research on sexuality, health and human rights that it began in 2008. For mandate reasons, the WHO is not able to publish the papers itself, and has invited ICHRP, with the support of the researchers, to take over their production with the aim of making the work available and contributing to the recognition, understanding and application of human rights standards related to sexuality and sexual health. Since 2008, the ICHRP has been collaborating with the Department of Reproductive Health and Research (RHR) of the WHO, which manages a consortium composed of UNDP/UNPFA/WHO and the World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP). RHR works to strengthen the capacity of countries to enable people to promote and protect their own health and that of their partners, with respect to sexuality and reproduction, and to have access to and receive quality reproductive health services when needed. From January 2008 to April 2010, the RHR-WHO began a global research initiative that mapped the human rights standards regarding sexuality that have been developed under international, regional and national laws and jurisprudence. WHO commissioned 9 well-known international and regional experts to produce 7 working papers, now written, that examine domestic laws and jurisprudence in the light of obligations under international human rights law. The Papers include information on good practice, and describe where human rights have been successfully recognised in laws and jurisprudence. They also identify gaps and inconsistencies with respect to authoritative standards. In addition to pointing out national and regional specificities, the working papers identify and discuss laws and cases that appear in a number of jurisdictions in the different regions and therefore reveal existing or developing trends, or departures from these trends. The discussion papers focus on different regions, including: Latin America; Eastern Mediterranean; Africa; Europe; Western Pacific; and South-East Asia. One paper covers international legal norms and standards related to sexual health. For mandate reasons, WHO cannot publish the research itself. Recognising the crucial role that ICHRP can play in “translating” its research materials into documents that are user-friendly and policy-focused, WHO, with the support of the papers’ authors, has invited ICHRP to take on the task of editing, publishing and disseminating the research that WHO’s project has produced. Publication and dissemination of the papers would provide normative guidance for states, and facilitate state efforts to improve protection of rights relating to sexuality. The papers would contribute both to the WHO’s purposes - to develop a global policy on sexual health – and provide an information base for ICHRP’s future work on sexuality and human rights. Three forms of output are envisaged: Publications The project will produce 7 edited Discussion Papers which review and analyse relevant international, regional and country-specific human rights and legal instruments, as well as jurisprudence produced by international and regional human rights bodies and highest level national courts. Each paper will contain examples of good practices where human rights have been successfully recognised in laws and jurisprudence, and identify gaps and inconsistencies with respect to authoritative standards. In addition to pointing out national and regional specificities, 17
Page 2 and 3: International Council on Human Righ
Page 52: International Council on Human Righ

NARRATIVE REPORT 2009 - The ICHRP

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?