SPW Newsletter N.14 – July, 2014

This Newsletter has been jointly produced by Sexuality Policy Watch and the IDS Program on Sexuality and Development. The collection of analyses here presented juxtaposes the Indian and the Ugandan contexts with the intention of opening up new questions for struggles in both these places, but also with the objective of generating a deeper conversation amongst activists and academics about the peculiarities of Law and Politics as distinct (if connected) realms of action.
Read moreE-book SexPolitics: Reports from the Front Lines

SPW is very pleased to announce that SexPolitics: Reports from the Frontlines launched last year is now available in Spanish – Políticas sobre Sexualidad: Reportes desde las líneas del frente. This e-book is the result from a global research project initiated in 2004 to examine the dynamics of sexual politics in eight countries – Brazil, Egypt, India, Peru, Polonia, South Africa, Turkey and Vietnam – and two global institutions: the United Nations and the World Bank.
Read moreFunding Agencies
The links below give access to agencies that fund sexual and reproductive rights.
Read morePorn. Panic. Ban.
Taken from GenderIT.org by Bishakha Datta I’m convinced we’re having the wrong conversation around digital porn. Late last year, the British government banned a bunch of sex acts online, including female ejaculation. Yes, female ejaculation. Talk about the imagined harms (1) of porn. And strangulation, facesitting, fisting, some spanking, full bondage and restraint, plus abusive […]
Read moreNorwegian Expert Group Publishes Progressive Gender Recognition Recommendations
The Norwegian Ministry of Health’s Expert Committee on legal gender recognition presented its conclusions and recommendations in Oslo today. The report proposes legislation based on self determination and improvements in trans-related health care service provision. The suggested process for legal gender recognition will be straight forward. The expert group recommends that a personal declaration to […]
Read moreReview – Sexualities in World Politics
Partaking in the effort to make sexual politics visible in the discipline of international relations (IR), Sexualities in World Politics offers ten essays edited by Manuela Lavinas Picq and Markus Thiel addressing how LGBTQ perspectives impact IR as a discipline, practice, and disciplinary practice.
Read moreSPW Working Paper, No. 10 – Emerging powers: Can it be that “sexuality and human rights” is a ‘lateral issue’?

This article shares ideas discussed in the project first round of conversation, which was held in Rio in July 2013, and includes an analysis – originally presented at a panel at Conectas’ 13th International Human Rights Colloquium, held in São Paulo in the same year – on the way rising powers, since their emergence, have behaved in multilateral debates around human rights, gender and sexuality. It has been originally published in the 10th Anniversary commemorative edition of SUR Journal (Edition V.11-N.20- Jun/2014)
Read moreWorking Paper, No. 9 – Ranking homophobia: comments on the Spartacus International Gay Travel Index
SPW presents its Working Paper n. 9, in which Justin Perez (Univesity of California, Irvine) procedes to a critical understanding of lesbian and gay tourism, as well as comments on the increasingly significant role that calculative technologies play in how rights can be claimed and legitimized. Read it here.
Read moreConscientious Objection and Abortion: A Global Perspective on the Colombian Experience
SPW recommends Georgetown Law School’s O’Neill Institute study (co-authored by Women’s Link) Conscientious Objection and Abortion: A Global Perspective on the Colombian Experience. Click here to access it in English. And here in Spanish.
Read moreSexual and reproductive rights global landscape in March 2015
Women’s, feminists and other civil society NGOs from Latin America and the Caribbean launched astatementcriticizing the Political Declaration approved by Members States Monday 9 march in United Nations, in the 59 period of Sessions of the Commission on the Social Status of Women (CSW). In Iran, two new draft laws were tabled. One of them […]
Read moreWorking Paper, No. 8 – Biopolitics at the Crossroads of Sexuality and Disaster: The Case of Haiti, by Rosalind P. Petchesky
SPW Working Paper N. 8 presents the remarkable analysis developed by Rosalind Petchesky, member of SPW Steering Committee, on the biopolitics of the militarized humanitarian responses to the Haiti 2010 earthquake, with a particular focus on global inequalities, racialization and sexuality. Click here to read it.
Read moreSexual and Reproductive Rights Global Landscape in February 2015
No major event has been registered by our radars at the sexual and reproductive rights global landscape in February. But we would like to recommend a series of inspiring books, publications and others resources that have reached us recently: – The Global Public Health Special Issue (volume 10, issue 2) on SRHR “Sexual and Reproductive […]
Read more‘A Distinctly French Universalism’: Translating Laïcité after Charlie

by Muriam Haleh Davis It was impossible to avoid the discussion, despite my repeated protests. In Lyon, as in the rest of France, there was nothing else to talk about—especially when I found myself seated across from a colleague who teaches at an international lycée, the crucible of Republican education. He was visibly emotional as […]
Read moreWorking Paper, No. 7 – The global context: Sexuality and geopolitics (selected texts)
In the Working Paper The global context: Sexuality and geopolitics, find the following selected texts from SPW Newsletters N. 10 and N. 11: Reflecting on 2011 events: scattered notes on how sexual politics intersect with a shifting global landscape, by Sonia Corrêa; Aid conditionality and respect for LGBT people rights, by Luis Abolafia Anguita; Aid, […]
Read moreSexual and reproductive rights global landscape in January 2015
In January, reproductive rights have invaded the front pages and screens under the impact of Pope Francis’ statementurging the faithful not to reproduce as “rabbits”. This speech act inevitably provoked reactions from the most diverse quarters actors, including the German Association of Rabbit Breeders, whose president declared that it is “unacceptable that the reproduction of […]
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