Autonomy vs Protectionism looking back on our HRC 53 Side-event

In 2004, in an article titled “Sexuality, Violence Against Women, and Human Rights: Women Make Demands and Ladies Get Protection”, the legal scholar Ali Miller outlined a paradox. Despite the recognition of women’s human rights and increasing attention paid to violence against women in countless spaces, including through the media, the violence was not understood, prevented or adequately responded to. Miller points to two interconnected phenomena to explain this paradox. Firstly, the rise and practice of respectability politics. Due to this, more ‘explosive’ aspects of sexuality such as desire or autonomy are set aside in favour of issues that present less challenge to the systems of patriarchy, racism and class. And secondly, protectionism.

SRI Submission to the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health: Sexual Rights During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In response to the Special Rapporteur’s call for contributions, SRI made a submission locating the impact of COVID-19 on the right to sexual and reproductive health within a broader context of racial capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, ableism and austerity.

Joint Submission to the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, its Causes and Consequences

This joint submission in response to the questionnaire by the Special Rapporteur provides context to the analysis on laws on violence against women. As a critical aspect to understanding laws on rape and other forms of sexual violence, this submission locates penal laws within the larger structural paradigm that dictates and influences the enactment and implementation of these laws and policies. It provides critical analysis of the harms of carceral approaches or approaches that rely on punishment and incarceration, when addressing gender-based violence. It argues that the report of the Special Rapporteur is an opportunity to lay down clear frameworks on consent and to counter paternalistic and essentialist discourses.