AN INCLUSIVE SEXUAL RREPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND RIGHTS FRAMEWORK FOR NIGERIA
Presented on the occasion of
SEMINAR IN HONOUR OF DR. BABATUNDE AHONSI
By
Cesnabmihilo Dorothy Aken’Ova
INCRESE
I want to apologize to Action health Incorporated, Dr, Uwem Esiet, and all the esteemed colleagues present at this memorable occasion at which I am absent. I accepted the invitation to be here and to do this p[presentation because I love and respect Dr. Ahonsi, I value the partnership between AHI and I and the role they have played in building my capacity and helping make find the Sexuality field of work where I am completely at home. Most importantly, my deepest apologies go to Dr. Ahonsi
I thought that I will leave the capacity building process of the Ashoka fellows and come to Lagos and be part of this unique opportunity to show appreciation to you and honour you for your work and your role in my professional and personal growth. Unfortunately, I am not ale to because the workshop is a package that has enabled me work through my self, my body and my focus and I have realized that I was so burnt out that I would have been of only very little use at this forum.
I am undergoing therapy right now, and am astonished at how damaged the fabric that makes me was. I hope that you will forgive me and accept this paper as my contribution to honour Dr. Ahonsi.
Dr. Ahonsi, I do respect you but have to be absent and I hope you understand as you have always done, that I need restoration of my soul and my body to be able to continue the work I do and to be more efficient in so doing.
Thank you.
I believe that when the UNFPA convened the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994 in Cairo, and articulated sexual rights provisions in the Programme of Action, they did not envisage the controversy it was going to generate as a result of the backlash from fundamentalists who suddenly woke up to the realization that women had made so many gains and were going to use these provisions to empower minorities, to challenge the patriarchal setting and cause power to shift. Things got so murky that during the appraisal process of the implementation of the programme of action 5 and 10 years down the line, the convener of the ICPD ferociously negotiated with governments and activists not to “re-open” the PoA. What this meant was that the world was halted from making progress on the realization of erotic justice for all. This presentation seeks to shed a little light on what life would be like for Nigerians, especially the marginalized and disadvantaged groups if Nigeria had an all inclusive Sexual Rights Framework. Nigeria had signed and ratified a good number of the most valuable treaties and consensus documents without reservation and these are impregnated with elements of sexual rights. The CEDAW, the CRC, the Economic, Social and Political Rights, the universal declaration of Human Rights, the regional instruments including the Maputo declaration, the optional protocol on women’s right, etc. However, these have not made a significant difference in our political environment judging from the fact that the country has been shy of domesticating these treaties and making them enforceable. A summary of the sexual rights provisions would be: 1. Sexual Freedom: choice in sexual matters, that sex is a personal and private matter, and (physical, psychological, and emotional) safety 2. Sexual Pleasure/Enjoyment: comfort, desire, the (physical, psychological, spiritual, emotional) ability to enjoy sexual relations/activities 3. Freedom from discrimination: on the basis of but not limited to disability/ability, HIV status, gender/sexual orientation, sex, age, ethnicity, religion, race, social status (caste or class) 4. Information and Education on Sexual Matters: that allows a person to know more about his or her body and make satisfying, pleasurable and safe sexual decisions. 5. Sexual Health Care: Access to and availability of [quality] services or care for sexual health needs, (including social access and acceptability, existence of sufficient numbers and types of facilities, physical proximity, cost and other environmental and social factors) These sound pretty much like rights we would all desire to enjoy, experiences we would ALL desire to experience and express. What then could be standing in-between us and the realization of these rights? And what does it cost us? What can we do to attain an all inclusive sexual rights framework in Nigeria? The international debates that trickle down to the regional and national levels have made it all the more challenging for Nigeria to appreciate and put in place mechanisms that guarantee sexual rights for all. As we may have repeatedly observed, especially over the past 8 years or so, many claimed that sexual rights are new rights and seek to dismiss propositions for the inclusion of sexual rights in consensus documents, programmes, etc. We have observed with dismay, our dear country negotiating sexual rights alongside governments such as Iran, Sudan, and the rest of those countries that we would ordinarily consider strange bed fellows. And countries for which Nigeria should be providing leadership. As a result, activists have mounted pressure on Nigeria resulting in some tokenistic political shift. We have therefore gained the inclusion of sexual rights language in the national policies on health, adolescent, HIV/AIDS, and gender. Nigeria has domesticated the CRC. In spite of this, there are indisputable pointers to the fact that we are yet to come to a full understanding of the concept of (sexual) rights. That rights are inalienable, and that no rights of an individual or a group are more important or valuable than the rights of another. In the Nigerian constitution, laws and policies, we still have provisions that counteract the noble and bold intentions and affirmation in sexual rights. The penal code provision that allows wife battering, the criminal and penal codes that provide sentences for women who seek abortion services, and service providers, the legal definition of rape and the elements for prosecution that make justice elusive to rape survivors, the policy on HIV/AIDS that lays the conditions prohibiting access to adolescents to VCTs unless there is parental consent, the laws that govern sexual and gender orientation, identities, and expression, including the sodomy laws, etc, are significant indicators to the poor understanding, denial of the affirmation of individual bodily (sexual) rights. Consciously or unconsciously, the language in our constitution, policies and legal provisions preserve patriarchal values which are responsible for our attitudes and perceptions. They govern the power of representation and how and why some meanings are preferred and determine the extent to which we identify with them. The also determine what is celebrated, rewarded or tabooed, shamed, criminalized, and punished. This is largely responsible for the selective application of rights, especially, sexual rights. The costs include the selective targeting of certain groups and individuals by state and non-state actors for acts of shaming, discrimination, stigmatization and violence. All sorts of forms of acts of violence. This is evidenced in: a) The recent media hounding of the gay community, their families and friends using the Metropolitan House of Rainbow as the “scape goat”. This has gone on for weeks. Activists have been searching for ways to respond to these assaults of personalities and persons, ways of establishing illegality to provide a basis for seeing redress, and it has been so difficult. On the face value, we would all agree that this manner of media practice has abused the rights of privacy in abundance and we would want to report the reporters to their peers for sanction. But what does the media ethics say about reporting and privacy? 3. Privacy As a general rule, a journalist should respect the privacy of individuals and their families unless it affects the public interest. A. Information on the private life of an individual or his family should only be published if it impinges on public interest. B. Publishing of such information about an individual as mentioned above should be deemed justifiable only if it is directed at: i. Exposing crime or serious misdemeanour; ii. Exposing anti-social conduct; iii. Protecting public health, morality and safety; iv. Preventing the public from being misled by some statement or action of the individual concerned. The constitution would have been our last refuge, but… b)You may recall the bill that was presented to the National house of assembly about two years ago on the prohibition of gay marriage in Nigeria. It went way beyond gay unions to attack all civil liberties provided for us by the universal declaration of human rights. It took everything, to kill that bill. International pressure, local pressure, astute mobilizing especially for the public hearing, unimaginable amount of resource and providence – time that made the bill die with the Obasanjo regime, sunk in to kill the bill. c) The nudity bill. How on earth would a nation so rich in diversity and culture, with the sexiest traditional attire for women and girls as is seen in the Gbagyi, Fulani, Efik, Ibo, etc, cultures make a law on nudity that attacks the very essence of the being of its citizens? Is that not a reflection of the fact that some people are more superior in rights than others? More self righteous? More powerful and have accorded to themselves the power to determine who we are rather than the empowering self determination we should all be enjoying as enshrined in the sexual rights provisions? d) The sporadic arrests, extortion, rape, trials, imprisonment of sex workers, trans persons and homosexuals is also a powerful indicator of what the costs can be when we have a selective application of rights, a condition that favours a powerful few, servants of patriarchy. e) Family organized rape of daughters that are perceived to be lesbians, expulsion from home, school and termination of appointment at work places, are frequent experiences of sexual minorities and others who do not conform to the patriarchal models of sexualities. These ave gone on for a long time without remedies. Te victims are further victimized, those who come to their aid are stigmatized and pulled down to discourage others from giving support to these groups and communities. The price we pay for not having an all inclusive sexual rights framework is high! It destroys self determination and productivity. It endangers democratic principles and undermines democratic structures and gains. It drives communities underground and gives rise to unsafe clandestine practices that endanger health and fundamental human rights. it burns resources like no other state of being. It takes turns in identifying its victims. It destroys the very fabric that makes the nation state thrive – citizenship, the sense of belonging and the right to participate in nation building and to enjoy the benefits. What can we do to reverse this? We need to deconstruct patriarchy and reconstruct our country by creating a human rights value system that respects the rights of ALL Nigerian in all our diversity. This we will achieve by using an all inclusive language in our constitution, policies and laws, and abrogating laws that contradict the principles of sexual rights. We need to advocate relentlessly for the review of the existing penal and criminal codes for this to be achieved. We need to participate in the full process of constitutional review that is going on. Some of us need to get into the mainstream to effect change from within while we lend tem support from the outside. We need to do this by changing ourselves to appreciate ourselves as we are and appreciate others for who they are. Dr. Ahonsi has demonstrated this possibility in his work before and at the Ford Foundation. Let us take and scale it up. This is our chance. This is the guarantee to erotic justice for ALL
Thank you.
REPORT ON SEXUAL RIGHTS SHORTLY
Thank you.
The Executive Director of INCRESE just came back from a workshop which assembled a large number of stakeholders to revise the draft national policy on Adolescent Health and Development. In her report to the office she described how she worked with the few sexual rights and health activists that were in the forum to ensure that issues of sexual health and rights of young people were captured in the policy. This was not without a strong opposition! Even from among those we consider the front line activists for the health and development of young people were those who were determined not to allow the “homosexual agenda” sail through. With a lot of strategizing and the support of the expert and experienced consultant, we were able to put in language that is progressive. Of course we lost in some but we won some. Of course our celebration of these gains is with fingers crossed since the draft policy has to gain the Minister’s approval and the presidential endorsement. If everything we have now goes through, a lot of hope blown out will be re-enkindled for issues of sexual rights and health and communities of sexual minorities in Nigeria who are marginalized from development programmes, services for prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS. We succeeded in including the following into the draft revised policy: - Recognition of the debilitating impact of unsafe abortion on the lives of young women
- Making services available to all categories of young people which was a compromise adopted in the place of “young people in all their diversity”.
- We insisted on the use of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and not Female Genital Cutting (FGC) as was put in the draft. There was stiff resistance until the national policy on Female Genital MUTILATION was brought to the workshop. This helped to resolve the deadlock.
- Married adolescents and their special needs were recognized.
- Parental care and guidance was introduced
- We proposed replacement of the family with “families”
- We introduced language on rape, sexual harassment and other forms of sexual abuse against young women in the section
- We substituted religion with spirituality
- We proposed the language “Safer sex” as a replacement for “responsible sexual behaviour”
- We introduced the language “diversity” in recognition of the fact that young people are not a homogenous group
- We proposed the Behavioural Change Communication as one of the strategies to be used in the implementation of the policy
- Sexual health and rights was accepted as an area of policy thrust
Other gains in the draft policy include the inclusion of the responsibility of the mass media to disseminate “accurate information” concerning the health and development of young people. The Ministry of Communication was also charged to ensure the enforcement of protective regulatory policies and laws that ought to control the activities of the mass media.
We hope that these are retained in the approved document will retain the input we made. This will take us several steps ahead in recognizing and working on sexual health and rights issues.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 05 November 2009 )
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