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LATIN AMERICA:
"Sexuality Is an Essential Part of Humanity"
By
Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES (IPS) - In an effort to promote
the free enjoyment of human sexuality, separate from
reproduction, the International Planned Parenthood
Federation (IPPF) launched the world's first
declaration of sexual rights in the Argentine
capital on Wednesday.
"We want states to commit themselves to protecting
these rights, and for the United Nations to adopt
them in future meetings," Carmen Barroso, IPPF
regional director for the Western hemisphere, told
IPS.
"Sexual Rights: An IPPF Declaration", the result of
two years' work by a multi-disciplinary team,
proposes that "sexuality is an essential part of our
humanity," and that its free expression "is a
component of human rights." The Declaration espouses
"the entitlement to experience and enjoy sexuality
independent of reproduction."
The New York-based IPPF, which has offices in over
150 countries, provides training and technical
assistance for the promotion and defence of sexual
and reproductive health for men and women on every
continent.
Barroso said that in Latin America, there is
"inertia" on the part of governments, which agree to
proposals for developing sexual health issues but do
not translate them into public policies. There is
also a "tremendously conservative" lobby in the
United States, she added.
"The new administration" of U.S. President Barack
Obama "is no longer exporting the obscurantist,
anti-scientific and absurd ideology that demonises
the use of condoms and argues that they do not
provide protection against disease, but resistance
to them continues in the region," she said.
There are also "structural factors" in Latin America
that hamper sexual rights, such as poverty, lack of
education, gender inequality and other inequalities
"between social classes, between ethnic groups, some
of which are extremely underprivileged, and between
regions, even within the same country," she said.
For example, Argentine physician Enrique Berner,
president of the Adolescent-2000 Health Foundation (FUSA
2000) and head of adolescent services at the "Dr.
Cosme Argerich" Acute General Hospital in Buenos
Aires, said at the launch ceremony that the teenage
pregnancy rate in the south of the Argentine capital
is three times the city average.
The south side is one of the most impoverished areas
of the city, where more than 20 percent of pregnant
mothers-to-be are under 18, compared with an overall
average of less than seven percent for the capital.
Barroso, an expert on sexual and reproductive
health, said human rights in general gained ground
in the mid-20th century, and expanded in the 1990s
with the recognition of children's rights. In the
mid-1990s, the U.N. affirmed reproductive rights,
"but sexuality was tagged on as an afterthought,"
she said.
"People talked about sexual and reproductive rights,
but in fact they meant reproductive rights only,"
she said. In 1995 at the World Conference on Women
in Beijing, sexual rights were introduced in the
negative, as "women's right not to suffer harm,
violence or coercion" in sexual intercourse, she
said.
"It was a step forward, but no one talked about the
positive right to sexual pleasure, which is only now
beginning to be discussed," she said. "That's why
the IPPF is offering this Declaration as a tool for
progress toward a specific concept of sexual
rights."
The Declaration also recognises the sexual rights of
persons under 18, who need individual protection
based on the idea of their "evolving capacity to
exercise rights on their own behalf." According to
this idea, parental authority eases off as young
people progressively gain in decision-making
autonomy.
In addition, the Declaration says that "all persons
are entitled to the pursuit of a pleasurable
sexuality" and "to choose whether or not to found a
family and have children."
"All women have the right to information, education
and services necessary for the protection of
reproductive health, safe motherhood and safe
abortion," it adds.
On Monday and Tuesday, regional experts including
Barroso held the First Latin American Forum on Young
People: Autonomy and Confidentiality in Buenos
Aires, in order to share their experiences of
providing sexual health services for under-age
teenagers.
Chilean lawyer Lidia Casas of Diego Portales
University told IPS that in the last few years the
debate in Latin America "has centred on human
reproduction" and on the restriction or distribution
of contraceptive methods. "There is a state of
denial about sexuality, which is excluded from the
debate," she said.
In her view, sexual rights "are absolutely invisible
in the health services. The topic of pleasure simply
does not exist in the consulting room, and it is
only just beginning to emerge among men because of
Viagra," a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction.
The experts attending the forum agreed that one of
the keys to making progress on the sexual rights
agenda is education, which is also mentioned in the
Declaration.
According to Barroso, health and education
ministries in Latin America signed a commitment to
include sexual health in school curricula by 2010,
but in her view this is merely "a rhetorical
commitment, without public policies to back it up."
She said there is an abundance of pilot projects in
the region that never spread to the rest of the
country, and there are also examples in which sex
education is limited to one biology class a year,
where contraceptive methods may or may not be
discussed.
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