Realizing Sexual Rights Sexuality, human rights, development, development agencies hear two of these terms all the

time - and the third hardly at all Annika Sder, Swedens State Secretary for Development Co-operation, pointed out in her opening remarks to a workshop hosted by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs last Thursday on Sexual Rights, Development and Human Rights: Making the Connections. Calling for more willingness to use these three terms together, and to explore the connections between sexuality and issues at the very heart of the development agenda, Annika Sder made explicit Swedens commitment to advancing the pursuit of sexual and reproductive rights for all. At the initiative of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs Expert Group on Development Issues (EGDI), the workshop brought together senior members of the Swedish government, Swedish and international researchers, practitioners and activists. The right of every person to her or his own sexuality and over her or his own body became Swedish official policy in December 2005. This, Annika Sder reminded us, is the first time a bilateral agency has adopted a policy that specifically addresses sexual and reproductive health and rights.. Swedens support for the right to abortion and the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is affirmed in the policy, which has far-reaching implications. In adopting such a policy, Sweden leads the way for other progressive governments to make a commitment to an issue that affects the lives and livelihoods of untold millions of women and men the world over. Swedish Foreign Minister and Minister for Development Co-operation, Carin Jmtin, affirmed the centrality of sexuality and sexual rights to our very existence as human beings. As she said in her address: Sexuality lies at the core of human life, of what makes us fully human - it is the key to our capacity to contribute positively and fully to the societies we live in... Issues of sexuality and sexual rights concern everyones rights to life and to good health. Yet there are many people who work in development who find it difficult to understand what sexuality has to do with development. In a framing paper for the workshop, IDS Susie Jolly and Brazilian feminist activist Sonia Correa spelt out connections between poverty, inequality and discrimination against women and men who deviate from the norms dictated by their societies. These may include men who are denied the right to love other men by the legislation left in place by the British Empire, the subject of Indian activist and human rights lawyer Sumit Baudhs presentation. They may include sex workers who are routinely abused by the police, denied access to services and stigmatised as prostitutes - but who only come to the attention of development agencies when they migrate for sex work, and become the victims of trafficking, as Jelena Djordjevic of the Serbian Anti-Trafficking Centre illustrated. They may include women who prefer not to have relationships with men, who may or may not identify as lesbian. As Argentinian researcher Alejandra

Sarda pointed out, lesbians may find it impossible to sustain the lie of hiding their sexuality in the workplace, and end up with the sack, or accepting low wages and poor working conditions just to have a job. And Henry Armas, Peruvian human rights lawyer and director of the NGO GRUPAL, gave the example from the current electoral contest in Peru, where the press are homing in on a non-married female presidential candidate, maligning her suitability for office not because she is a woman, but on the grounds that she is a woman who has never had a husband and children. Yet it is not only sexual minorities who lose out when sexual rights are not respected and protected. The connections between poverty, inequality and sexuality are just as evident for sexual majorities. Women may lose resources when they marry into unequal relationships, and end up vulnerable to marital rape - which is unrecognised as a crime in many countries. Men suffer from pressures to conform to macho stereotypes, and may be maligned and ostracised if they fail to comply. Workshop presentations placed some of these realities in context. From Zambia, Ophelia Haanyama rum shared her own story of recognising that she had sexual rights only after she had two children and had contracted HIV, and reminded the participants of the everyday denial of the sexual rights of young women in Africa. Who, she asked, shall these young women claim their rights from? Their parents? A state out of reach and largely unknown to them? She spoke of women who are forced to marry men who are not of their choosing and whom the state fails to protect from being raped within marriage, and of young women and men denied the opportunity to protect themselves from HIV infection because some people far away in another reality think they ought to be abstaining from sex. Kopano Rateles analysis of ruling masculinities highlighted the contradictions in South Africa between a progressive constitution and a masculinist political elite, whose retrogressive attitudes speak louder and with more effect than any official policy. The workshop also heard stories of change. Amongst the most moving was that of Pinar Ilkkaracan, from the Turkish organization Women for Womens Human Rights, who told tales of successful mobilization to bring about changes in Turkeys penal code and grassroots work with women to enable them to recognise their rights to their own bodies and sexualities. Nike Esiet from the Nigerian organization Action Health International spoke of how efforts to promote sexuality education had resulted in statewide programmes in primary, secondary and tertiary educational establishments. It is these kinds of initiatives that are now under threat in a climate where US and fundamentalist Christian forces collude to deny people the right to information about their bodies and their lives. As Pinar Illkkaracan pointed out, sexuality is not only a personal and private issue, it is also linked to systems of power, politics and domination in society. It is precisely these linkages between power and politics that development interventions in the name of participation, rights and citizenship seek to transform. And whilst there is much talk in development about participation, the fact that stigmatisation due to your sexual identity or means of pursuing a livelihood can make participation virtually impossible is hardly ever mentioned. It is rare enough for gender

issues to be taken seriously in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. Do any PRSPs exist that name measures for addressing the poverty of transgender people, who may have few employment options beyond sex work because of pervasive discrimination? Or in which an explicit effort has been made to consult with LGBTI communities? Henry Armas spelled out the fundamental connections between sexual rights and an entire spectrum of human rights, from the right to life, the right to housing, the right to health. Genuine democratic participation and inclusive citizenship demands, he argued, recognition of these connections and of what it takes to enable those marginalized by sexuality to exercise their right to participate. To do so, Sonia Correa and Susie Jolly argued, calls for an approach that acknowledges violations and harms, but goes beyond a focus on the negative to emphasise a more life-affirming perspective on the positive, pleasurable and fulfilling dimensions of sexuality. Paul Hunt, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, drew attention to the absence of any mention of sexual and reproductive health and rights in the MDGs. He argued that the struggle against poverty and for human rights depended on explicitly recognising these connections. How might this be done? To break the silence on sexual rights, Paul Hunt advocated a strategy of naming without shame. Human rights advocates have depended on naming and shaming as a way of drawing attention to what needs to change. But, he argued, promoting and protecting sexual rights called for naming sexual rights wherever we see them without shame and making the connections between sexual rights, human rights and development so evident that no-one could pretend any longer that they didnt exist. Breaking the silence and emphasising the linkages between sexual rights, human rights and development gains a new urgency in the context of the rise of repressive religious injunctions that deprive people of any rights at all over their own bodies and their own sexualities. In these dangerous times, democratic participation becomes ever more critical, Sonia Correa argued, to open spaces for conversations about sexuality to take place, and to affirm the centrality of sexual rights to human and economic development. To make this possible, Gita Sen reflected in her summing up remarks, new alliances are needed that bridge old divides between social movements struggling for rights and social justice, that might animate these spaces and build coalitions for the kinds of changes that will make sexual rights real.