Disability, the Stigma of Asexuality and Sexual Health: A Sexual Rights Perspective

This article discusses the stigma of asexuality generally attributed to persons with disabilities. It examines how this stigma posses a barrier to attainment of sexual health. It argues that health programming must treat persons with disabilities as sexual subjects who have sexual rights in order to advance their sexual health

Adolescent sex and ‘defilement’ in Malawi law and society

During colonisation Malawi received a Western penal code, which included the ‘defilement’ provision, restricting males from sexually accessing girls below a specified age. Countries that maintain colonial age of consent provisions, including Malawi, have uncritically assumed that these laws serve the purpose of protecting girls and children from harm. This article examines the fundamental assumptions underlying the development of sections 138 and 160B of the Malawian Penal Code, and their historical and sociocultural origins. The article submits that these provisions serve the interests of adults and not those of children. They are inherently heterosexist, promote gender-stereotypical meanings of sexuality and potentially stigmatise the normative development of sexuality in children. Sections 138 and 160B need to be reviewed and aligned with Malawi’s commitments to promote gender equality and sexual health and the rights of children.This article was first presented as a paper at the Colloquium on Adolescent Sexual Rights convened by the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria.http://www.ahrlj.up.ac.zaam2018Private La

Adolescent sexual and reproductive health and universal health coverage: a comparative policy and legal analysis of Ethiopia, Malawi and Zambia

Universal Health Coverage (UHC) forces governments to consider not only how services will be provided–but which services–and to whom, when, where, how and at what cost. This paper considers the implications for achieving UHC through the lens of abortion-related care for adolescents. Our comparative study design includes three countries purposively selected to represent varying levels of restriction on access to abortion: Ethiopia (abortion is legal and services implemented); Zambia (legal, complex services with numerous barriers to implementations and provision of information); Malawi (legally highly restricted). Our policy and legal analyses are supplemented by comparative vignettes based on interviews (n = 330) in 2018/2019 with adolescents aged 10–19 who have sought abortion-related care in each country. We focus on an under-considered but critical legal framing for adolescents–the age of consent. We compare legal and political commitments to advancing adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights, including abortion-related care. Ethiopia appears to approach UHC for safe abortion care, and the legal provision for under 18-year-olds appears to be critical. In Malawi, the most restrictive legal environment for abortion, little progress appears to have been made towards UHC for adolescents. In Zambia, despite longstanding legal provision for safe abortion on a wide range of grounds, the limited services combined with low levels of knowledge of the law mean that the combined rights and technical agendas of UHC have not yet been realised. Our comparative analyses showing how policies and laws are framed have critical implications for equity and justice

The duty to make abortion law transparent : a Malawi case study

Despite adopting a progressive legal and policy framework informed by internationally recognized human rights norms and values, Malawi has not complied with the obligation to explain its abortion law in accordance with legal and human rights standards. In 1930, the colonial government adopted a Penal Code derived from English criminal law, containing provisions regulating access to abortion, but has not undertaken measures to explain when abortion is lawful. What constitutes legal abortion has never been clarified for health providers and potential clients. Consequently, eligible girls and women fail to access safe and legal abortion. The Malawi Law Commission, following its review of the colonial abortion law, has proposed liberal changes which, if implemented, would expand access to safe abortion. However, the immediate step the government ought to take is to clarify the current abortion law, and not to wait for a new law expected to materialize in the indeterminate future.Regional Team for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Embassy of Sweden, Lusaka, Zambiahttp://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ijgo2019-12-01hj2019Private La

Adolescent sexual and reproductive health and universal health coverage : a comparative policy and legal analysis of Ethiopia, Malawi and Zambia

Universal Health Coverage (UHC) forces governments to consider not only how services will be provided – but which services – and to whom, when, where, how and at what cost. This paper considers the implications for achieving UHC through the lens of abortion-related care for adolescents. Our comparative study design includes three countries purposively selected to represent varying levels of restriction on access to abortion: Ethiopia (abortion is legal and services implemented); Zambia (legal, complex services with numerous barriers to implementations and provision of information); Malawi (legally highly restricted). Our policy and legal analyses are supplemented by comparative vignettes based on interviews (n = 330) in 2018/ 2019 with adolescents aged 10–19 who have sought abortion-related care in each country. We focus on an under-considered but critical legal framing for adolescents – the age of consent. We compare legal and political commitments to advancing adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights, including abortion-related care. Ethiopia appears to approach UHC for safe abortion care, and the legal provision for under 18-year-olds appears to be critical. In Malawi, the most restrictive legal environment for abortion, little progress appears to have been made towards UHC for adolescents. In Zambia, despite longstanding legal provision for safe abortion on a wide range of grounds, the limited services combined with low levels of knowledge of the law mean that the combined rights and technical agendas of UHC have not yet been realised. Our comparative analyses showing how policies and laws are framed have critical implications for equity and justice.MRC/DFIDhttps://www.tandfonline.com/loi/zrhm21am2021Centre for Human Right

Childhood sexuality in Africa : a child rights perspective

It is an undeniable fact that children in Africa face many challenges in their sexual health and development trajectories. One of the challenges that children face is ideological, that is, the social construction of childhood sexuality and the effects of that construction on law and policy and on what information and services children may access regarding sex and sexuality. Adults tend to represent children as sexually innocent and incompetent, and their actions toward children focus on preserving this sexual innocence and averting sexual risks. The article discusses how this ideological positioning of children shapes sexuality education, and the criminalisation of sexual conduct between consenting adolescents. Legal instruments and related interpretive instruments such as court judgments and the General Comments and Recommendations of treaty-monitoring bodies play an important role as they construct meanings of childhood sexuality that align with or contradict dominant representations of childhood as sexual innocence which has effects for children’s sexual rights. The article analyses how General Comments of the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the African Committee of Experts have represented childhood sexuality. It argues for the transformation of views about children toward perceiving children as having sexual agency to the extent of their evolving capacities, as a prerequisite to addressing challenges that children face in Africa relating to sexuality. It recommends that the African Committee of Experts should, in its interpretation of the African Children’s Charter, construct childhood sexuality positively to represent children as sexual agents rather than positioning them as sexually innocent which also implies viewing any sexual activity of the child as inherently harmful or as a mark of deviance or corruption.https://www.ahrlj.up.ac.zapm2021Centre for Human Right

Preventable hysterectomies in Malawi : addressing challenges in the healthcare system

Women should play a key role in ending the problem of preventable hysterectomies that are a result of poor obstetric and gynecological care in Malawi.http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ijgohj2021Centre for Human RightsPrivate La

Integrating child rights standards in contraceptive and abortion care for minors in Africa

Minor girls in Africa face challenges in accessing high-quality contraceptive and abortion services because laws and policies are not child-friendly. Many countries maintain restrictive laws, policies, or hospital practices that make it difficult for minors to access contraception and safe abortion even when the pregnancy would risk their life or health. Further, the clinical guidelines on contraceptive and abortion care are silent, vague, or ambiguous regarding minors' consent. African states should remedy the situation by ensuring that clinical guidelines integrate child rights principles and standards articulated in child rights treaties to enable health providers to facilitate full, unencumbered access to contraceptive and abortion care for minor girls. A sample of clinical guidelines is analyzed to demonstrate the importance of explicit, consistent, and unambiguous language about children's consent to ensure that healthcare workers provide sexual and reproductive health care in a manner that respects child rights

A feminist post-structuralist critique of the transformative potential of Malawi’s gender equality law to promote adolescent sexual health

Malawi enacted the Gender Equality Act (GEA) in 2013 to address gender inequality and promote sexual health and rights. The question the thesis addresses is whether the GEA itself an artefact of the very culture it would want to transform, could contribute to the transformation of social norms to improve the sexual health trajectories of adolescents. The thesis employs a hybrid approach to addressing the question, using a legal doctrinal methodology in combination with a feminist poststructural methodology of discourse analysis. The important assumption the thesis makes is that the GEA is part of a broader framework of discourse. The GEA as discourse draws upon prevailing discourses that shape people’s experience of sexuality. This is a challenge because the GEA’s conceptualisation of gender inequality and its implementation is influenced by the prevailing dominant gender discourses. The thesis explains what it means for the GEA to influence social change. It explores the possibilities of it creating a radical world in which society recognises adolescents as social actors and agents who play a role in constituting their gendered and sexual worlds. Enabling the GEA to be transformational requires policy actors to interpret and implement the GEA to open new possibilities for adolescents. Only then can the GEA transcend its existential predicament of itself being an artefact of cultural discourse.Thesis (LLD)--University of Pretoria, 2020.Private LawLLDUnrestricte

Legal Grounds III: Reproductive and Sexual Rights in Sub-Saharan African Courts

Legal Grounds III: Reproductive and Sexual Rights in Sub-Saharan African Courts is a joint publication of the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program of the University of Toronto, Canada; the Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, at the University of Pretoria, South Africa; and the Center for Reproductive Rights, New York. It is the expanded third volume in a series originally conceived by Kibrom Isaak, LL.M., a graduate of the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program, who organised and wrote the prototype, and drafted most of the first two volumes. The editors of Legal Grounds III are tremendously grateful to all those who have supported us to produce this book. The planning and execution would not have been possible without a grant from the Ford Foundation. African publication and dissemination were generously supported, through the Centre for Human Rights, by The Open Society Foundations