Sexual health human rights and the law

10 | Sexual health, human rights and the law
Exclusion criteria
• opinion papers;
• papers describing intervention programmes
without rigorous evaluation of health impact.
2.4 Critical assessment and synthesis of
retrieved information
The January 2010 meeting (see section 2.1: Process)
set the parameters for the critical assessment and
analysis of the source materials.
Human rights standards: The international and
regional human rights standards relating to the eight
identified sexual health topic areas were established
as the benchmark against which national laws and
jurisprudence were assessed.
Legal and jurisprudential data: The legal and
jurisprudential information retrieved was assessed
as to whether it was (i) consonant with authoritative
international and regional human rights standards,
and (ii) relevant to sexual health.
Public health data: The public health information was
assessed on the basis of the extent to which legal
measures – for example the decriminalization of sex
work – were associated with positive or negative health
outcomes related to sexuality and well-being. Given
that laws and their implementation do not readily
lend themselves to epidemiological measurement,
associations were assessed based on available studies
that examined these outcomes as rigorously as possible.
For each sexual health topic area (see section 2.2: Scope)
the following analytical framework was set:
• description of the topic from the health and wellbeing
point of view;
• identification of relevant international and regional
human rights standards for the topic;
• documented impact (positive and negative) of laws
relating to sexual health and well-being;
• identification of legal and jurisprudential examples
from different regions/countries of laws that
demonstrate, either explicitly or implicitly, the
protection of human rights and the sexual health
and well-being of the population.
The following rules were followed in synthesizing the
information retrieved:
• Issues for which clear examples, human rights
standards and/or public health relevance were not
identifiable were excluded from the report.
• The selection of national examples did not aim to
provide a comprehensive review and analysis of all
countries in the region.
• Identification of national laws did not indicate the
existence of implementation measures.
• Laws that were identified throughout the legal
assessment (based on our inclusion/exclusion
criteria) were not analysed within their national,
cultural, societal or political contexts; only the
strict text of the laws was used.
• The protection of health needs of vulnerable/
marginalized populations and human rights
standards specifically established for their protection
were systematically integrated across the report.
• Specific attention was paid to the health and
human rights protections of adolescents.
The in-depth research into international, regional
and selected national laws and human rights
jurisprudence relating to sexuality and sexual health
revealed an extensive number of laws, in a wide
variety of countries, that deal in some way with
sexuality and sexual health.
Many of the laws analysed demonstrated negative
dimensions: they were clearly associated either with
negative health outcomes (e.g. the penalization
of adultery through flogging or even the death
penalty) or with violations of human rights (e.g.
the exclusion of unmarried people from receiving
information and services related to contraception)
or, most frequently, both.
In all regions of the world, however, examples were
identified of laws and jurisprudence that both uphold
human rights standards and aim to contribute to the
promotion and protection of sexual health. The report
particularly focuses on providing illustrative examples of
laws and jurisprudential materials from different parts of
the world that have a demonstrated positive effect on
sexual health and that adhere to international, regional
and/or national human rights norms and standards.