Institute of Development Studies

The right to pleasure on World Aids Day

1 December 2010

On World AIDS Day, IDS sexuality researchers reiterate their call for development agencies to move beyond a negative approach to sexuality and to recognise people's sexual rights and the power of pleasure as a force for change.

This year's World AIDS Day theme is Universal Access and Human Rights. In recognising the connections between human rights status and vulnerability to HIV infection, high-level UN pronouncements have called for the decriminalisation of all consensual adult sexual behavior.

Addressing sexual rights as human rights poses a challenge for change to countries that continue to criminalise same-sex sexual expression, sex work and sex outside institutionalised heterosexual relationships, and to marginalise people whose right to love who they wish is compromised by society's sexual norms.

But, say the IDS researchers, sexual rights are not just about protection against harms (although this remains an important part of human rights work on issues of sexuality). They are also about the positive enjoyment of human rights.

Positive approaches to sexuality

Kate Hawkins, convener of IDS's sexuality programme, said: 'This World AIDS Day perhaps we could give more thought to how sexual rights fit within a human rights framework. The benefits, not only to public health but also to human development, have the potential to be huge.

'Sexual pleasure can be affirming and empowering for people not seen as deserving of this kind of enjoyment and can also provide energy to fuel political mobilisation. However there has been very little analysis of the policy implications of these connections, or documentation of practical initiatives which seek to empower women and others through positive approaches to sexuality.'

Kate Hawkins, together with former IDS researchers Susie Jolly and Andrea Cornwall, are currently addressing these gaps by drawing together leading scholars and activists in this area from North and South to reflect on why talking about sexual pleasure in terms of human rights is so important - and how to do so in policy and practice.

Wellbeing and empowerment

Andrea Cornwall said: 'Talk about sexuality in relation to HIV often reduces sexuality to sexual behaviour and human beings to behavioural categories. In the process, we lose a lot. Leaving pleasure and desire out of the frame means losing an appreciation of how vital these are for wellbeing and empowerment.

'Perhaps most importantly, reducing sexuality to acts and to labels means losing sight of people, and of sexuality as part of what makes us fully human.'

Kate Hawkins added: 'With the Pope's announcement that using condoms is sometimes acceptable, and trials for pre-exposure prophylaxis coming up with promising findings, HIV prevention is in the news again.

'On World Aids Day, it is worth celebrating advances in technology and shifts in attitudes. But it is also worth reminding ourselves of how much still needs to change if we are all to realise the right to enjoy sex that is, in the words of the International Planned Parenthood Foundation, happy, healthy and hot (pdf).'