New Declaration Says "Sexuality Is an Essential Part of Humanity"

By Marcela Valente, IPS News. Posted June 13, 2009.

"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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