Proudly Pushing the Global Sexual Rights Agenda

The Sexual Rights Initiative (SRI) is a coalition of national and regional organizations from all parts of the world with an office in Geneva that has been advocating for the advancement of human rights in relation to gender and sexuality at the UN Human Rights Council since 2006. Thank you for supporting this work. 

The SRI is committed to the right of every person to sexual and reproductive health and well-being, bodily autonomy, and the right to have control over and to make free and informed decisions on all matters related to sexuality, reproduction and gender, free from violence and discrimination.

The SRI regularly engages on a wide variety of sexual rights issues including (but not limited to):

• Bodily autonomy
• Comprehensive rights-based sexuality education
• Criminalization and other restrictions on safe abortion
• Early and forced marriage
• Gender based violence and discrimination
• HIV/AIDS and human rights
• Intersectional discrimination
• Maternal mortality & morbidity
• Patriarchal gender norms
• Rights of sex workers
• Sexual rights of adolescents and young people
• Universal access to sexual and reproductive health information, education, supplies and services
• Violence and discrimination based on the exercise of one’s sexuality including sex outside of marriage

Examples of our achievements: 

• Collaborated with hundreds of local and regional activists to consistently raise sexual rights at the Human Rights Council;
• Integrally involved in the Human Rights Council’s decision to take up the issue of maternal mortality, which recognizes maternal mortality and morbidity as a human rights matter;
• Over the first two Universal Periodic Review cycles, the SRI submitted 160 reports, all of them in association with local/national organizations or activists, and addressing a wide variety of sexual rights issues;
• Developed innovative digital tools to enhance sexual rights advocacy including the Sexual Rights Law and Policy Database, UN Resources Tool and the Sexual Rights UPR database;
• Successfully advocated for the first ever UN resolution references to comprehensive sexuality education, adultery, marital rape, prohibition of discrimination on the basis of gender, intimate partner violence and many other substantive language gains related to sexual rights:
• Worked to ensure that the Human Rights Council explicitly included sexual and reproductive health within in the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health;
• In the Human Rights Council’s institution building phase, played a vital role to ensure governments paid attention to thematic protection gaps in the system of special procedures.

The 31st session of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) was held at the UN Human Rights Council, in Geneva, from 5-16 November 2018. Fourteen countries were reviewed during UPR31: Belize, Central African Republic, Chad, China, Congo, Jordan, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Monaco, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Senegal. Read more about UPR31 Sexual Rights Recommendations from our newsletter here.

The UPR34 submission deadline is March 28, 2019 for the following countries: Italy, El Salvador, Gambia, Bolivia, Fiji, San Marino, Kazakhstan, Angola, Iran (Islamic Republic of), Madagascar, Iraq, Slovenia, Egypt, Bosnia and Herzegovina.