Welcome to the Bodily Autonomy and Sexual, Reproductive, Health and Rights (SRHR) study guide, where we look at some of the big ideas, advocacy history and current conversations on SRHR in international human rights. 

When talking about SRHR it’s important to note that the term means much more than just reproductive health. SRHR is a fairly new concept in human rights (popularized thanks to advocacy by young people and feminists over the last 25 years) and exists side by side with other approaches such as Family Planning, Sexual Health, Reproductive Justice etc. Access to safe and legal abortion, choice, consent, bodily autonomy and integrity, comprehensive sexuality education (CSE), pleasure, violence, discrimination etc., all fall within the umbrella of SRHR. 

SRHR was first enshrined as a human right in the 1994 UN ICPD Conference and is a core component of the Beijing Platform For Action, SDGs, and ratified by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and other UN bodies. It is one of the 6 key themes in the Generation Equality Forum. SRHR is recognized as a basic human right which means it is ‘inherent and inalienable’ to every human being (regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, race, class, etc.). 

This study guide will not cover specific SRHR issues (such as Menstrual Health and Period Poverty; Child, Early and Forced Marriage; Trafficking and Forced Sex Work; Access to Safe Abortion; HIV/AIDS; Gender Based Violence; Forced Sterilization; Maternal Health; Female Genital Mutilation; Contraceptive Access etc.) and instead focus on introducing big ideas and some common feminist frameworks. We hope that with these concepts and frameworks, no matter what SRHR issues you work on, or which communities you work with, can help you as an activist and SRHR advocate inform your campaigning and strategies.

Why we need sustained feminist advocacy:

Despite being enshrined in global human rights platforms, SRHR continues to be a highly contested field of advocacy. Feminists, youth-led and human rights groups are facing enormous push-back by governments, conservatives and special interest groups because of a growing fundamentalist narrative or “gender ideology”. 

The Polish Constitutional Court decision of 2021, for example, declaring abortion (except for in cases of rape, incest and threat to the life of the woman) illegal, laws criminalising young people’s sexuality, laws criminalising certain identities and professions, are all examples of closing civil spaces and the impact of rising anti-gender and ‘gender ideology’ [see video on gender ideology by feminist activist Sonia Correa via CREA for more information]. 

We invited Bodily Autonomy & SRHR activists from around the world to help introduce some big ideas and share their journey as feminist activists. The following video is an intergenerational dialogue between a young and older feminist on SRHR. 

SRHR as a field includes many different issues that have their own local and national contexts. Many, if not all, of these issues are connected by some key concepts that feminists and youth-led movements have helped shape.

Bodily Autonomy

Feminists define SRHR beyond narrow definitions focused on health. The GEF, the Beijing Platform for Action and many global advocacy spaces use the concept of Bodily Autonomy to frame how they advocate for reproductive and sexual rights.

Bodily autonomy is the right to make free and informed decisions about your body and life. A popular saying you may have heard is “My body, my choice.” This extends to deciding what you wear, who or how you love, your access to reproductive services – basically having the power to control your own body.

Unfortunately, not all bodies are considered equal. Different bodies are the target of laws, policies and policing because, afterall, a person’s power or self-determination depends on the social world they live in. They encounter different forms of discrimination, violence, even criminalization but also are subject to cultural norms, moral arguments or gendered expectations based on narratives of “protection”, security, or “purity”. 

A domestic worker in India, a young person with a physical disabiliy in Tanzania, a young transgender man in Colombia – theoretically all have the right to make decisions about their own body – but in practice face multiple restrictions, laws, and social control mechanisms that prevent them from freely doing so. 

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in 2021 reported that nearly half of all women are denied bodily autonomy. Read their report “My Body is My Own – Claiming the right to autonomy and self-determination” (Download here) to dive deeper into Bodily Autonomy and SRHR.

Comprehensive Sexual Education (CSE)

If we keep bodily autonomy – or the fundamental right to make decisions about our own bodies and lives – at the center of how we think about SRHR, then ensuring the knowledge and unbiased information necessary to make those decisions in an informed way is also critical. 

Comprehensive Sexual Education (CSE) is a youth-friendly, rights-based, age-appropriate and holistic approach to sexuality education that goes far beyond learning about biology and safe sex. Sexuality after all is also about knowing our bodies and desires, not just about reproductive organs or preventing pregnancy. CSE brings in the physical and emotional, individual and partnered experiences of sexuality and spans conversations across gender equality, body image, puberty, destigmatizing HIV, the right to pleasure, self-esteem, sexual diversity and queer/LGBTQI affirming perspectives. For a full definition of CSE, read the Guttmacher Institute’s handout outlining 7 essential dimensions of CSE here.

Young people working for SRHR have a basis to demand CSE and youth-friendly SRHR services as a right that is enshrined in many global conventions and agreements. Organizations like Restless Development and youth-led civil society advocate for centering youth and youth-leadership, or meaningful youth engagement, in CSE at all levels from design, dissemination, implementation to evaluation. The 1994 ICPD Program on Action recognized not only adults, but for the first time young people’s right to SRHR. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of violence against Women (CEDAW), Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), International 14 Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) as well as national commitments made by your country can help ground your advocacy for CSE. 

The Youth Coalition, a youth-led organization focused on SRHR and CSE as well as a GEF Action Coalition leader, has a wide range of resources for youth-led organizations working on CSE and SRHR advocacy. Visit their resource site here.

Consent

Consent is a feminist value central to all SRHR and Bodily Autonomy work. 

Consent is complicated. It needs to be understood within our different contexts and realities. While consent should be as easy ‘yes means yes’ and ‘no means no’, we can’t ignore that many of us live in societies that have never taught us about consent, desire or the right to pleasure. When desires and pleasure are not acceptable, we often find that consent is not a black and white issue. This is even more complicated for people with mental and psychosocial disabilities, or adolescents, whose ability to consent is not uniformly recognised by laws. 

While consent is defined in law is often in the context of violence (in most jurisdictions the definition of consent is usually associated with rape), our experience of consent happen outside the law and is often negotiated entirely outside the context of violence. In fact, we negotiate consent every day in all aspects of our lives.

Take a look at this video, aimed at young children, talking about creating a culture of consent from Blue Seat Studios.

Consent is exercised against the backdrop of choice and power. For example, just like bodily autonomy is not experienced equally across identities, certain identities have more power and privilege to give consent in our world. This reinforces the critical need for our advocacy to be intersectional and consider how consent is exercised or violated from different social positions.

Feminist scholar, Carole Vance, has asked some important questions about consent to help us look at the intersectionality. 

“What kind of person can give consent? What are they giving consent to? With whom? Where? How do different regimes of racial, ethnic, and religious subordination shape understandings of consent? How is consent demonstrated? If consent is deemed to be lacking, who is harmed? And how do advocates engage in conversations about these questions?” (Vance, 2014, p. 5)

Reproductive Justice

While we may sometimes use the word “rights” and “justice” interchangeably – in sexual rights it is very important to know the origin and history behind “Reproductive Justice” versus “Reproductive Rights”. Movements for justice has often been developed and used by grassroot and minority communities (such as black and indigenous groups) for many years and is deeply rooted in historical struggles of gender, race, caste, class, ethnicity and (dis)ability rights. 

Black feminists have often been at the forefront of pushing human rights thinking and the same is true for SRHR. Before the 1995 Beijing Platform and the 1994 ICPD Conference, a group of black women from the US organized under the name Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice to coined the term “Reproductive Justice” (RJ) in response to the insufficient ways women of color’s needs and lived experiences were being reflected in the mainstream, white women-led, reproductive rights movement (read more at Sister Song). The framework that Reproductive Justice introduced by Black feminists was a seachange and led the sector to integrate intersectionality (a term first coined by the black feminist lawyer and activist Kimbere Crenshaw) , highlighting that there is no “choice” unless issues of access are addressed. RJ posits that access and agency are linked to systems of oppression – therefore housing justice, environmental justice, or gender justice is part of reproductive justice. 

To learn more about RJ watch this video from BlackRJ.org: 

Similarly, the disability rights activist and artist Patricia Berne have talked about disability justice in SRHR. They established 10 principles of disability justice which included intersectionality, cross movement solidarity, anti-capitalist politics and interdependence (Berne et al., 2018).

The 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the 25 years of activism since then have marked many advocacy moments. The movement for reproductive and sexual rights however is not linear. There has been incredible progress, many of which has been led by young feminists and youth-led organizations,  as well as new and mounting challenges as well as backsliding of rights. The following section will try to provide a quick snapshot of some major advocacy platforms as well as some real-life examples of how movements have pushed SRHR and Bodily autonomy as a field, locally and beyond the UN.

The Beijing Platform For Action & Generation Equality Forum

The Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action was a convention established during the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. The original conference launched the ‘12 critical areas of concern’ and became a non-legally binding global policy platform for gender equality. The Platform has been active for over 25 years and has been ratified by 189 countries globally. 

Prior to the 1995 conference, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) was and continues to be an annual conference on gender equality as well as the official monitoring and implementation body on the Beijing Declaration, governed by UN Women.

To accelerate the progress on the Beijing Platform, UN Women along with civil society (NGOs/INGOs, UN agencies, feminist movement organizations and youth-led organizations), the private sector and governments are convening again in 2021 at the Generation Equality Forum hosted by the Governments of Mexico and France. The GEF is a global convening that has launched 6 Action Coalitions, including the Action Coalition on Bodily Autonomy and SRHR. The GEF will reinvigorate the movement for gender equality by launching ambitious global commitments as well as 6 Blueprints for action including on SRHR and Bodily Autonomy. You can read the GEF Blueprint for Action on SRHR and Bodily Autonomy here as well as the Global Acceleration Plan for Gender Equality which outlines the major targets or “game-changing” actions for SRHR below:

1. Increase delivery of comprehensive sexuality education in and out of school reaching 50 million more children, adolescents, and youth by 2026. 
2. Within a comprehensive SRHR framework, increase the quality of and access to contraceptive services for 50 million more adolescent girls and women; support removal of restrictive policies and legal barriers, ensuring 50 million more adolescent girls and women live in jurisdictions where they can access safe and legal abortion by 2026. 
3. Through gender norms change and increasing knowledge of rights, empower 260 million more girls, adolescents and women in all of their diversity to make autonomous decisions about their bodies, sexuality and reproduction by 2026; enact legal and policy change to protect and promote bodily autonomy and SRHR in at least 20 countries. 
4. Increase accountability to, participation of and support for autonomous feminist and women’s organizations (including girl-led and Indigenous organizations), women human rights defenders and peacebuilders, strengthen organizations, networks and movements working to promote and protect bodily autonomy and SRHR.

The GEF has also ensured several mechanisms for youth-led accountability and leadership throughout it’s processes. The Beijing+25 Youth Task Force and youth leaders have helped create a Young Feminist Manifesto for GEF. Regional Young Feminist Manifestos have also been developed such as Africa Young Women’s Beijing+25 Manifesto. The GEF is an active space for feminists and youth-led organizations to shape, engage and advocate within. The GEF will continue to exist beyond 2021, especially in mobilizing national youth-led organizations to monitor, influence and advocate for SRHR and Bodily Autonomy in their regional, national and local communities.

UN International Conference for Population Development (ICPD)

In 1994, at the International Conference for Population Development (ICPD) held in Cairo Egypt, the Programme for Action officially endorsed SRHR as a human right for the first time (CHANGE, 2019). This global commitment set a precedent to ensure accessible SRHR for all and established SRHR as a basic human rights. Commitments made in the 1994 ICPD were reaffirmed in 2019 during the Nairobi Summit at ICPD +25 (read the report here).

Based on the ICPD and subsequent UN interpretations of SRHR, in 2018 the Guttmacher–Lancet Commission defined SRHR to mean “a state of physical, emotional, mental, and social wellbeing in relation to all aspects of sexuality and reproduction, not merely the absence of disease, dysfunction, or infirmity. Therefore, a positive approach to sexuality and reproduction should recognise the part played by pleasurable sexual relationships, trust, and communication in the promotion of self-esteem and overall wellbeing. All individuals have a right to make decisions governing their bodies and to access services that support that right” (Ann M Starrs et al., n.d., p. 2646).

CEDAW

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is the foremost UN treaty recognising the rights of women. The treaty came into force on 3^rd September 1981 and has so far been ratified by 181 countries. While there is no specific mention of SRHR in the treaty, it can be read into various Articles including 3, 5, 10, 12, 13, 15 & 16. 

While a plain reading of the text of CEDAW is ‘binary’ with rights being elaborated for women on an equal basis with men, the general recommendations that have followed have moved away from this binary. CEDAW now recognises ‘women’ to include ‘lesbian, bisexual or transgender woman or intersex person’ (CEDAW, 2017, para. 12). 

CEDAW & Sex Workers Rights

Many feminists recognize that the language of CEDAW is still limiting, not only in terms of sex, sexuality and gender, but also particularly concerning issues around the conflation of sex work with trafficking and prostitution (CEDAW, 2020). Feminist movements today include a global sex workers rights movement (see for example Amnesty International’s 2016 policy on sex workers rights and the Red Umbrella Fund, a global feminist fund for and by sex workers) that delinks consensual sex work from forced or coerced trafficking.

However, CEDAW has also been a valuable space for advocacy for marginalised women pushing for intersectionality of rights recognition. CEDAW has recognised in its concluding observations and general recommendations that women’s rights to health (including right to safe and accessible abortion services) also includes their sexual and reproductive health and that governments have an obligation to respect, protect and fulfil these rights. 

CEDAW & Disability Rights

CEDAW and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), in 2018, released a joint statement on ‘Guaranteeing sexual and reproductive health and rights for all women, in particular women with disabilities’. In the statement that saw CEDAW and CRPD working together for the first time, the Committees noted that “(S)tates parties should ensure non-interference, including by non-State actors, with the respect for autonomous decision-making by women, including women with disabilities, regarding their sexual and reproductive health well-being. A human rights-based approach to sexual and reproductive health acknowledges that women’s decisions on their own bodies are personal and private, and places the autonomy of the woman at the center of policy and law-making related to sexual and reproductive health services, including abortion care”. This statement has been towards reaffirming the intersectionality of rights. 

Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health

The mandate of the Special Rapporteur (SR) is an important avenue for advocacy. Part of the special procedures of the human rights council, the SR undertakes thematic reviews and country visits. The final report of the former SR focused on the impact of COVID-19 and how “non-COVID-19-related health-care services have been less available during the pandemic, including sexual and reproductive health-care services in wealthy countries.” (Dainius Pūras, 2020, para. 55) The current SR is Ms. Tlaleng Mofokeng, from South Africa, who was appointed to her position in 2020. Her mandate focuses on challenges to the highest attainable standard of mental and physical health specially for indigenous people, migrant and refugees, internally displaced people, people affected by extreme poverty, minority communities, people with disabilities, people who live in residential institutions, people in detention, people who use drugs & LGBT and gender diverse persons (OHCHR, 2020). 

SRHR has been an issue in focus for the mandate since its inception. Access to SRHR for adolescents was the theme for the 2016 report where denial of access to SRHR was seen as a human rights violation (Dainius Pūras, 2016). Similarly, the 2011 report explored the criminal and legal restrictions on abortion which infringed upon human dignity, the right to decision-making and bodily integrity (Anand Grover, 2011).

The advocacy spaces listed above are not not a comprehensive list of human rights mechanisms for SRHR and Bodily Autonomy. There are many more spaces, platforms and conventions operating in conjunction and parallel to UN spaces. Regional and national forums on SRHR are also meaningful avenues for advocacy that require the critical perspectives and contributions of youth voices to shape and change. Get involved and plan your advocacy campaign. To help you plan your actions, continue on to Module 7 – Advocacy & Action [LINK].

Advocacy Case studies

UN conventions and spaces exist at a global level to help set standards and connect movements across borders. The real life experiences of young people are tied to their national political, social and cultural contexts. Below are some examples of SRHR & Bodily Autonomy campaigns and advocacy led by young people that interpret the larger world of rights into practice.

1. Skin Stories https://medium.com/skin-stories

“Skin Stories is the first and only publication in India dedicated to publishing fresh, urgent perspectives on disability, sexuality and gender. Housed at the non-profit Point of View, we believe in great storytelling to bust myths about and promote important conversations around disability in South Asia.” 

Skin Stories’ use of storytelling is a powerful example of gender and SRHR advocacy focussed on changing culture by centering the lived experiences of young people with disabilities, in their own voices. The power of cultural work is often discounted when compared to legal or policy-advocacy. We would challenge these normative views and instead point to the power that stories have in connecting people, cultivating the questioning and ultimately transformation of deeply entrenched biases and norms.

2. Injusta Justicia (Unjust Justice)

Injusta Justicia is a Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)-wide campaign led by Resuj,  a Global-South network of reproductive justice activists, Vecinas Feministas and Balance AC, two LAC Feminist organizations. In their own words the campaign seeks to do the following:

“The Unjust Justice campaign seeks to reflect on the limits of criminal law and punitivism as a strategy for the defense of sexual and reproductive rights, mainly of adolescents. Among others, the campaign seeks to draw attention to the unforeseen consequences of the unrestricted application of criminal laws and how this impacts the lives and autonomy of adolescents. In that sense, Injusta Justicia does not have all the answers nor does it pretend to have them, but rather seeks to generate the debate and have the discussions that we need as feminists to propose strategies and transformative alternatives focused on survivors. We invite you to be part of these dialogues.”

Learn more about the punitive laws operating in LAC countries against adolescents and young people seeking their reproductive and sexual rights, along with recommendations on how to advocate for greater SRHR in the region by visiting the campaign website.

3. Youth-Led Accountability for Gender Equality

Restless Development has been working with a network of young people across Tanzania and India to conduct youth-led research, advocate and ultimately improve access to SRHR and sexual rights. We are highlight TWO of our youth advocates from Tanzania to tell you in their own words about their advocacy on SRHR. 

1. JOSEPH JULIUS VIDEO
2. DORCE BLOG ON WEARERESTLESS – dives into her experience as a youth accountability advocate and disability rights activist.

Anand Grover. (2011). Interim report of the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (A/66/254).

Ann M Starrs, Alex C Ezeh, Gary Barker, Alaka Basu, Jane T Bertrand, Robert Blum, Awa M Coll-Seck, Anand Grover, Laura Laski, Monica Roa, Zeba A Sathar, Lale Say, Gamal I Serour, Susheela Singh, Karin Stenberg, Marleen Temmerman, Ann Biddlecom, Anna Popinchalk, Cynthia Summers, & Lori S Ashford. (n.d.). Accelerate progress—Sexual and reproductive health and rights for all: Report of the Guttmacher–Lancet Commission. The Lancet, 391, 2642–2692.

Berne, P., Morales, A. L., Langstaff, D., & Sins Invalid. (2018). Ten Principles of Disability Justice. The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 46(1/2), 227–230.

CEDAW. (2017). General recommendation No. 35 on gender-based violence against women, updating general recommendation No. 19.

CEDAW. (2020). General recommendation No. 38 (2020) on trafficking in women and girls in the context of global migration.

CHANGE. (2019). What is SRHR. https://srhrforall.org/what-is-srhr/

Dainius Pūras. (2016). Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (A/HRC/32/32).

Dainius Pūras. (2020). Final report of the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health (A/75/163).

Marleen Temmerman, Rajat Khosla, & Lale Say. (2014). Sexual and reproductive health and rights: A global development, health, and human rights priority. The Lancet, 384(9941), e30–e31.

Merwe, L. A. van der, & Tamale, S. (2014). Negotiating Choice and Rights in Hierarchies of Power. Global Dialogue on Decriminalisation, Choice and Consent.

OHCHR. (n.d.). Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights. https://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/women/wrgs/pages/healthrights.aspx

OHCHR. (2020). Special Rapporteur on the right to physical and mental health. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Health/Pages/SRRightHealthIndex.aspx

SisterSong. (n.d.). Reproductive Justice. https://www.sistersong.net/reproductive-justice

Vance, C. (2014). Interrogating Consent. Global Dialogue on Decriminalisation, Choice and Consent.