Susan Roylance: NGOs call for sexual rights in UN post-2015 agenda

Over the past two years, many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have pushed for sexual and reproductive health and rights to be included in the U.N. post-2015 agenda. This wording has generally been understood to represent a push for abortion rights. But it was not openly recognized until Friday, at the Stakeholder Forum in New York, that this wording also included LGBTQ rights (the moderator, Alanieta Vakatale of the Pacific Islands Association, added the Q).

The speaker was Ambassador Peter Wilson, deputy permanent representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations. His statement was in response to a question from a representative of the International Gay and Human Rights Commission, over the problems that could occur from disaggregated data that keep track of members of the LGBT community and could lead to criminalization, stigma and stereotypes in our communities.

I think this is clearly a really important question, said Wilson. My country is deeply, deeply committed to making sure that a rights-based approach is part of this. The way we are feeding that into the post-2015 agenda is on sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Other speakers also focused on the need to separate sexual health and rights. Irene Kagoya, from Akina Mama Wa Afrika and representing the Womens Major Group, claimed the right to control our own bodies and the need for full realization of sexual rights. She urged the U.N. to promote comprehensive sexuality education to allow young people to make their own decisions.

We would also like to emphasize that sexual and reproductive rights are human rights, Kagoya said. If we cannot control our own bodies, sexualities and fertilities, we cannot exercise any of our other civil and political, economic, social and cultural rights.

Kagoya's comments echoed a statement produced in November 2014 at the Asia Pacific Beijing+20 Civil Society Forum. This meeting was in preparation for the official Beijing+20 meetings to be held at the U.N. in March, commemorating the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action created in 1995.

The Asia Pacific document said that women with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities are the most likely to experience marginalisation and a denial of their human rights and The single greatest barrier to the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action is the lack of binding, meaningful accountability mechanisms.

Interestingly, the accountability mechanisms brought up this subject at the Stakeholder Forum, as the LGBT community was opposed to having LGBT members identified, for fear of creating criminalization, stigma and stereotypes.

The Asia Pacific Forum also requested governments to review and remove laws and policies that discriminate and/or criminalize sex workers and people who use drugs.

On the reproductive side of the issues, the Asia Pacific Forum requested governments to provide reproductive health information and services, including safe and legal abortion, provided through the public sector, without any form of stigma, discrimination, coercion or violence.

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Susan Roylance: NGOs call for sexual rights in UN post-2015 agenda