A quarterly international newsletter on sexuality, sexual health, and sexuality education.
Volume 2, Issue 2 - Fall/Winter 2002
Sexuality and Rights Institute
In recent years, the discussion and dialogue about sexuality and human rights has intensified throughout the world. In an effort to provide an arena for more thorough thought, reflection, and understanding on the fundamental linkages of these two important topics, the first ever Sexuality and Rights Institute was held in Pune, India in March 2002.
This two-week course focused on a conceptual study of sexuality that examined the links between sexuality, rights, gender, health and their interface with socio-cultural and legal issues.
The Institute, a collaborative and innovative initiative of TARSHI (Talking About Reproductive and Sexual Health Issues) and CREA (Creating Resources for Empowerment in Action), both NGOs based in New Delhi, provided a space where activists, academics, and researchers could explore and develop conceptual understanding of how issues relating to sexuality intersect with issues related to rights, gender, and health.Through challenging theoretical readings, visual media, case studies, fiction, and group exercises, participants had an opportunity to critique and analyze policy, research, and program interventions through a rights-based approach.
Course themes included sexuality and the rights framework; sexuality, gender and the legal system; sexual and reproductive health and rights; sexwork, sexuality, and rights; agency and victimhood; representation of sexuality; and sexual diversities and rights.
Taught by national and international faculty, the Institute challenged participants from the fields of reproductive health, law, research, the women’s movement, and HIV/AIDS programs to critique popular understandings and assumptions about sexuality and develop the ability to analyze these in their own work.
Faculty included Radhika Chandiramani, director of TARSHI, New Delhi; Geetanjali Misra, director, international programs, CREA; Jyoti Sanghera, a founding member of the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW), an international network based in Bangkok; Manisha Gupte, co-convenor, Mahila Sarvangeen Utkarsh Mandal (MASUM), in Pune, India; Ratna Kapoor, director of the Centre for Feminist Legal Research, New Delhi; and professors Carole S. Vance, Lynn Freedman, and Alice Miller of the Columbia University School of Public Health in New York City.
For more information on the
Institute, (open to people working
in India) contact:
The Sexuality and Rights Institute
19 Golf Links, Second Floor
New Delhi 110 003
India
Phone: 91.11.461.0711
Fax: 91.11.465.4603
E-mail: sexualityinstitute@vsnl.net
Web site: http://www.sexualityinstitute.org
Web Master: siecus@siecus.org