The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and The Sexual Rights Initiative (SRI) have developed toolkit to throw an international spotlight on human rights violations related to sexual and reproductive health and rights in country through the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process of the United Nations. The UPR is significantly a national process with specific moments which occur in Switzerland, Geneva, at the UN Human Rights Council.
This toolkit is designed to support Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to bring their expertise, knowledge, and experiences to an international forum. This toolkit can affect the realization of human rights in the daily life of individuals in the country. CSOs do not require in-depth knowledge of the UN system or human rights law to effectively participate with the UPR. CSOs participate meaningfully due to the knowledge and experience of national laws as well as policies which affect sexual rights in country because the UPR is concerned with the human rights situations inside the country being reviewed.
The UPR mechanism of the United Nations Human Rights Council is used to review each of the 193 Member States of the UN on its entire human rights record every four and a half years. Although relatively new, it is a powerful tool to hold governments accountable for sexual and reproductive rights violations, and to advocate for changes to particular laws and policies that impact on human rights related to sexuality.
In the first four years of the UPR, sexual rights advocates have already achieved significant success. Several governments have accepted recommendations related to sexuality education, access to abortion, female genital mutilation, contraceptive services, sexual orientation, and gender identity, sex work, women’s rights, HIV, maternal mortality and others as well.
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