Africa/Global: Sexualities and Sexual Rights

This article on Women’s Human Rights Net explores the legal international advancements concerning the sexual rights of all people, and women's in particular, as well as the threats, challenges and opportunities of these achievements that go hand in hand with cultural progress. It also presents related international mechanisms and instruments and facts and figures that reflect violations to these rights. Various bodies of the United Nations system, among these the UN Commission on Human Rights (CHR), the Reports by the Special Rapporteur on Summary and Arbitrary Executions, the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, have interpreted the right to respect for private life, gender-based discrimination or categories such as "other condition or status" as inclusive of sexual orientation. They have also spoken of the importance of "sexual rights" within the human rights framework.