Tag Archive for: Sexual and Reproductive Rights

Last Thursday, Córdoba awoke with posters of the campaign #ConMisHijosNoTeMetas on public roads and urban collectives. The slogan was born a few weeks ago, when the reform of the Law of Comprehensive Sexual Education was discussed in the plenary session of the National Congress commissions. On that occasion, an opposition group demonstrated to prevent progress with this legislation, arguing that Comprehensive Sexual Education could not become “indoctrination” by ideology, giving rise to the slogan of this campaign.

“Below, we offer a google translate version of the original article in Spanish. This translation may not be accurate but serves as a general presentation of the article. For more accurate information, please switch to the Spanish version of the website. In addition, feel free to directly contact in English the person mentioned at the bottom of this article with regards to this topic”

 

A necessary reform

The Law of Integral Sexual Education (ISE) N ° 26,150, in force since 2006, never had an effective national compliance. During the months in which the legalization of the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy was debated, Integral Sexual Education was mentioned as an urgent policy both by those who promoted the legalization of abortion and by those who opposed it. In the 2017 Learning tests, 8 out of 10 high school seniors said that sex education and gender violence are issues that the school should address and it does not.

On September 4 (World Sexual Health Day), a majority opinion was reached in the plenary of commissions that dealt with a project to reform the law of ESI. It seeks to strengthen the law to make it clear that it is mandatory in the entire national territory, in institutions of state or private management, beyond the “institutional ideology and the convictions of its members.” In this way, access to a fundamental human right that has been legally recognized for 12 years will be deepened.

That confabulation can be seen

However, the opposition sectors did not take long to be heard and began with a campaign on social networks with statements such as “with the children,” “the children are the parents, not the State” and “not the gender ideology in the school”. They define “gender ideology” as that “set of anti-scientific ideas that, for authoritarian political purposes, uproot human sexuality from its nature and monopolize it through culture.” They affirm that “the deconstruction of the human being will lead to chaos and extinction, as we have already done with nature and other species.” And in their documents they present false concepts about what is sex, gender, sexual orientation and identity. gender, with statements such as “there are only two genders”, “no one is born in the wrong body” and that trans people “suffer from gender dysphoria”.

The role of the Municipality in matters of public space advertising

This misleading and malicious campaign not only circulated through social networks. Hundreds of posters with the slogan “#ConMisHijosNoTeMetas – Yes to sex education, not gender ideology” appeared in spaces of municipal public domain in the city of Córdoba, in flagrant violation of articles 1, 15 ° clause a) and 40th paragraph e). of the Ordinance N ° 10378 of “Regulation of advertising carried out through advertising in the City of Córdoba”.

That is why, together with the Córdoba de Todos Foundation, and with the support of more than 50 social organizations, we made a presentation requiring the Municipality to immediately withdraw the advertisements. We argue, on the one hand, that the campaign violates the spirit of the ordinance, which aims to “regulate the advertising carried out by advertising in spaces or places of the Municipal Public Domain or susceptible to be perceived directly from them, with the purpose to safeguard public safety and morality, as well as to preserve and promote the cultural, aesthetic, landscape, urban and historical values ​​within the municipal ejido. ” On the other hand, the ordinance establishes in article 15 that the announcements can not be contrary to the law, affect morality or good customs, or be discriminatory. This applies to public road signs as well as to mobile advertisements, that is, those that were mounted on vehicles of the Public Transport Service (article 40).

Numerous media echoed our claim. Just a day later, we learned that the Coniferal company, concessionaire of the transport service, decided to remove the advertising of the lunette of their cars.

A fundamental human right

Integral Sexual Education is a human right of which the girls, boys and adolescents of our city are inalienable holders. This has been recognized by the Special Rapporteur for the Right to Education, who in his report to the United Nations General Assembly stated “The right to education includes the right to sexual education, which is a human right in itself, which in turn is an indispensable condition to ensure that people enjoy other human rights, such as the right to health, the right to information and sexual and reproductive rights. ”

This is consistent with the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1999 and approved by National Law 23,849 in our country a year later, which obliges the States Parties to respect the stated rights and to ensure their application “to every child subject to their jurisdiction, without distinction whatsoever, regardless of race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social status, economic position, physical impediments, the birth or any other condition of the child, his parents or his legal representatives “(article 2). It also orders them to adopt “all administrative, legislative and other measures to give effect to the rights recognized in this Convention, and with respect to economic, social and cultural rights” to the maximum extent possible. dispose … “(article 3).

It is a non-delegable obligation of the State to build the conditions for the fulfillment and active exercise of all rights, and this can not be an exception. The exercise of this right of children and adolescents can not be hampered by a campaign that misinterprets and confuses what should be understood by Comprehensive Sexual Education, except in areas of Municipal Public Domain.

Saying “ConMisHijosNoTeMetas” means reducing the exercise of this right exclusively to the family. It puts children and adolescents in a passive place, contrary to the current paradigm that must respect them as subjects of law. We understand that families are key in the path of education, and their role is unavoidable, but it is also absolutely necessary that there are public policies to guarantee this human right.

And now?

We still await a favorable response from the Municipality of Córdoba, which stated in the media that the issue is under study and will be analyzed in the coming days.

With our claim we do not seek to limit freedom of expression, although we do not share the ideology of those who promote the campaign. We understand that freedom of expression is a fundamental human right, but can we say anything by protecting ourselves in this right? Or is there a limit when words violate other human rights? Advertising, as well as the media, is one of the determining agents in the transmission of cultural patterns, and can collaborate both in the promotion of values ​​respectful of human rights and in the perpetuation of inequalities. The regulation of the content that is promoted in the public space, such as the municipal ordinance on which we base our claim, marks that limit. In addition, as we explained in our presentation to the Municipality, it is not appropriate to use municipal public domain spaces to disseminate messages that “weaken channels of dialogue, describe in a pejorative manner positions endorsed even by official bodies for the protection of human rights, and incite violence and democratic intolerance. ”

We also believe that it is essential that the government promote a campaign strengthening its commitment to the full implementation of the Law of Comprehensive Sexual Education, taking into account that in our city we have municipal public schools where the expressions of the advertising campaign in question can have generated confusion and conflict.

It is important to understand that what is in conflict is the Comprehensive Sexual Education, understood from a human rights approach and respect for sexual and gender diversity, consistent with our current legal framework and international standards that regulate the subject. It is this sexual education, as the fundamental right of our children and adolescents, that we must defend.

Contacts

Mayca Balaguer, maycabalaguer@fundeps.org

 

On June 28, the international day of LGBT pride is celebrated in commemoration of a series of events known as “Stonewell riots” that mark the beginning of the struggle for collective rights.

“Below, we offer a google translate version of the original article in Spanish. This translation may not be accurate but serves as a general presentation of the article. For more accurate information, please switch to the Spanish version of the website. In addition, feel free to directly contact in English the person mentioned at the bottom of this article with regards to this topic”.

A police raid that persecuted homosexual people who frequented the Stonewall Inn bar in New York gave rise to the demonstrations that, in 1969, were the most visible and iconic milestone of the time in the struggle of the LGBT + community.

This 28J finds the collective continuing and deepening this struggle. The transvestite and trans organizations celebrate this date with the convocation to the third national march under the slogan: “Enough of transvesticities and transfemicidios”. There will be mobilizations in the City of Buenos Aires and in different cities of the country.

Two important events accompany this day. First, the unpublished and historic June 18 ruling that sentenced Gabriel David Marino to life imprisonment for the crime against the transvestite human rights activist Diana Sacayán. It was the first time that Justice used the term “transvesticide” in the files. In the sentence, the court considered that it was a hate crime and that it mediated gender violence. On the other hand, the same day, the World Health Organization excluded transsexuality from its list of mental disorders, marking a great advance in the historical claim of the LGBT + group for the total depathologization of transsexuality and human diversity.

Also, today at 2:00 p.m. a bill that seeks the promotion of formal employment for transgender people and transvestites in the provincial sphere will be presented in the Legislature of Córdoba. This local initiative is part of the National Campaign for Trans and Transvestite Labor Inclusion that was launched in 2016.

In a sociocultural context of increasing respect and tolerance towards oppressed groups and minorities, much remains to be done. Although there are no official figures, the organizations count more than 40 victims of transvesticides and transfemicides so far this year. Also worrying is the average life of the trans community, which is barely 35 years old.

“We go out to the streets to shout enough of transvesticides and transfemicidios, enough of hate crimes, enough of avoidable deaths, enough of exclusion, enough of persecution and criminalization, enough to deny us access to work, we demand the law of labor quota in all the country, for the effective application and respect of the law of gender identity, especially in the field of health, because the medication is delivered to people living with HIV / AIDS, and for the approval of a law of historical reparation for transvestites and trans victims of institutional violence “manifest the slogans on this day of pride.

Author:

Mayca Balaguer

Contact:

Virginia Pedraza – vir.pedraza@fundeps.org

 

“Below, we offer a google translate version of the original article in Spanish. This translation may not be accurate but serves as a general presentation of the article. For more accurate information, please switch to the Spanish version of the website. In addition, feel free to directly contact in English the person mentioned at the bottom of this article with regards to this topic”.

We support and accompany the process that promotes the legalization of abortion. In this article we present our institutional positioning document and the reasons why we understand that guaranteeing safe and free legal access to the interruption of pregnancy is a matter of equality, public health and human rights.

We present the institutional document that bases the positioning of the Foundation for the Development of Sustainable Policies in relation to the need for the State to legalize the interruption of pregnancy, and guarantee its safe and free access, within the framework of the promotion and effective compliance of sexual and reproductive health policies, guaranteeing comprehensive sexual education, access to methods of contraception and the termination of pregnancy, as full realization of the rights involved.

The purpose of our organization is to contribute to a more just, equitable and inclusive society, seeking to guarantee the validity of human rights (article 2 of our statute). One of our main areas of work is the promotion of women’s human rights.

We understand that the legal interruption of pregnancy, as part of sexual and reproductive rights, is a matter of human rights, public health and gender. Matters that are of great relevance in our mission and objective as an organization.

We believe that it is necessary that in our country the conditions of legality be created so that women and people with the ability to generate access to medical practices that guarantee the interruption of pregnancy in a safe and free way in the respect of their will in the health system.

We insist, in addition, that the State guarantees the implementation of the Law of Comprehensive Sexual Education and of public policies aimed at access to contraception (such as the National Plan for Sexual Health and Responsible Procreation), as fundamental pillars for the realization of the right to the sexual and reproductive health of people.

A health issue

  • Clandestine abortions are the main cause of maternal mortality in Argentina.
  • Deaths and health complications linked to abortions disproportionately affect women in more vulnerable economic conditions.

A question of human rights and equality

  • Although the Supreme Court decided a case establishing criteria for access to abortion in certain circumstances, the practice is very restrictive and once again disproportionately affects women in more vulnerable economic conditions.
  • In recent years, various human rights committees have made concrete recommendations to Argentina to modify its abortion regulation.
  • In countries where access to abortion was legalized, there was no increase in the number of abortions. At the same time, there were drastic reductions in maternal mortality rates.
  • The termination of pregnancy should be the last resort in a comprehensive plan of sex education and access to contraceptive methods.

More information:

Contact:

Virginia Pedraza – vir.pedraza@fundeps.org

“Below, we offer a google translate version of the original article in Spanish. This translation may not be accurate but serves as a general presentation of the article. For more accurate information, please switch to the Spanish version of the website. In addition, feel free to directly contact in English the person mentioned at the bottom of this article with regards to this topic”

 

We note with concern the urgency and selectivity with which we are dealing with the problematic bill submitted by the National Executive Branch on June 12 under number 0010/PE/2017. This project, aiming to regulate religious freedom, incorporates the questionable figure of the institutional conscientious objection and generates mechanisms of institutional violence and violation of human rights.

This proposal not only jeopardizes the legitimacy of the legal system by proposing as a rule the possibility of excepting compliance with the law, but also seriously compromises the international obligations assumed by the Argentine State. This is so insofar as there is a great potential to obstruct the fulfillment and guarantee of many human rights, such as health, identity, non-discrimination and life free of violence, as well as to affect vulnerable groups such as children and adolescents , And people with disabilities.

Although the draft mentions several human rights treaties, it is widely misunderstood in their interpretation, in view of the many jurisprudential precedents given by our country’s courts in this area, as well as the recommendations of the corresponding human rights committees. In this way, it aims to erect as a guarantor standard, but in its drafting institutes mechanisms that preclude access to basic rights that must be guaranteed by the State.

Institutional conscientious objection, in practice, makes it possible to carry out generalized discriminatory acts against certain groups, historically relegated. Imagine a person who is in a position to request surgical intervention for genital reassignment, before institutions that by religious belief may violate their right to identity and psychophysical health in an institutionalized way.

The presumption of good faith granted by the project to the person exercising the conscientious objection reverses the burden of proof to the detriment of citizenship, making each person to judge each case, since the final interpretation of the constitutionality corresponds to the Power Judicial. This would generate serious mechanisms of institutional violence, and our State has acquired international commitments for the purpose of eradicating such violence. Let us not forget: in what democratic state can a person evade compliance with the law because his faith dictates it?

It also legitimizes the risk of children and adolescents, as well as persons with disabilities, when it enables its representatives to exercise conscientious objection on their behalf. This could lead to denial of certain medical treatments by representation, which has been widely rejected by our courts.

Likewise, in order to safeguard the rights of non-Catholic religious communities, churches and other denominations, it does not regressively recognize sexual and non-reproductive rights and international standards in this regard. In this regard, it should be recalled that conscientious objection is not recognized as a human right, and that the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (General Comment No. 22 March 2016) stated that, should States regulate it , This must be done in a way that does not impact on access to sexual and reproductive health. This recommendation is not observed in the project, much less in the hermetic treatment that is being given.

On the other hand, and what is not less, it is possible to rescue that by definition legal persons and / or entities do not possess the consciousness or subjectivity that seeks to protect the notion of conscientious objection. What religion or belief can a legal entity claim?

A rule that seeks to incorporate, in a generalized, discretionary and presumptive manner, the exception to the fulfillment of legal obligations, seriously compromises legal certainty, the bases of our rule of law, and the exercise and guarantee of human rights. Religious freedom is already guaranteed by our National Constitution, and by human rights treaties with constitutional hierarchy. This bill only undermines its exercise, and in turn implies an express and serious acceptance that not all of us have the same duty of obedience before the law.

The pronouncement of the organizations

We adhere to the rejection letter to Bill 0010 / PE / 2017, prepared by the Abogadxs National Alliance for Women’s Human Rights, which is joined by more than 100 recognized organizations and institutions from all over the country, and more than 400 experts and law specialists.

This letter will be presented to the Commissions for Foreign Affairs and Worship, Penal Legislation and Budget and Finance, of the Chamber of Deputies of the National Congress, in order to make known the institutional gravity that matters the consideration of this project, and the concern for its Selective treatment.

Author

María Julieta Cena

More information

Virginia Pedraza – vir.pedraza@fundeps.org

As was the news in the past few months, “Belén”, the Tucuman woman who had been imprisoned for two years accused of the murder of her newborn baby in a hospital, was acquitted by the Supreme Court of Tucumán on March 23 of this year.

“Below, we offer a google translate version of the original article in Spanish. This translation may not be accurate but serves as a general presentation of the article. For more accurate information, please switch to the Spanish version of the website. In addition, feel free to directly contact in English the person mentioned at the bottom of this article with regards to this topic”

 

In the first instance, “Belén” had been accused of “homicide aggravated by the bond and treachery.” The Criminal Chamber sentenced her to 8 years in prison considering her state of puerperium as a mitigating factor. That conviction was based on testimony from doctors, nurses and police officers who were in the hospital that day, saying that “Belén” had had a premature birth in the hospital bathroom and had dumped the baby into the toilet.

However, the judicial process suffered from serious breaches of due process guarantees, among which we can mention: it was never found that the body found was indeed a child of “Belén” because no DNA tests were performed; She did not have an adequate legal defense, which remained passive in the recognition of the facts against the defendant’s sayings; Most of the evidence was obtained in a serious violation of professional secrecy, among others.

Since lawyer Soledad Deza, a Catholic law litigation coordinator for the Right to Decide, took her case in 2016, hundreds of social organizations that fight for women’s rights echoed and asked for the young woman’s freedom, Which took place on August 16, 2016, after having spent more than two years in prison.

We celebrate the resolution of the Supreme Court of Tucumán that at the end of March of this year, it dictated the acquittal of “Belén”, while laying the foundations on which human rights guarantees should be supported for every woman attending a medical center To be attended to.

In this sense, in the ruling and the vote of Dr. Daniel Oscar Posse, it is understood that the situation that “Belén” suffered in the hospital was institutional violence,

“Since the rupture of the commitment of professional reservation was added a succession of facts that nothing is consistent with the treatment that should receive a person in clear state of vulnerability, in this case a woman, who went to the Hospital to receive urgent medical care : It was incriminated to be the author of the fact accusing her from the first moment of lying about her alleged ignorance of her state of pregnancy; The body of the dead child was displayed as a kind of moral punishment in a box; She was subjected to medical treatment without being given any explanation about the cause and extent of it; All their rights to confidentiality and privacy were violated, in clear violation of the health team’s obligation to maintain medical secrecy, even allowing the presence of police personnel in the midst of the practice of curettage. That is to say that the incartada was absolutely relegated from its state of patient, dispensing to him from there a direct treatment like rea“.

He also stated that “despite assuming that the accused was in a situation of defenselessness, the Court (appealed) did not act accordingly to ensure that the “Belén” lawyer was deficient in the first instances of the trial, The guarantees of due process and defense at trial, but, on the contrary, used such defenses or defensive defenses to underpin the conviction of the accused “(the bold is ours).

On the other hand, it recognizes that

“All the evidentiary material of charge – apart from illegal as much in its origin and incorporation, as I exposed it when dealing with the question of the violation to the professional medical secret – is confused, ambiguous and contradictory, what nullifies any possibility of that it arrives certainty. There is not a single element of proof of charge that does not present some bankruptcy”.

He then mentions, one after another, the shortcomings of the evidence provided by the Office of the Prosecutor and valued by the Court that unjustly condemned “Belén”. In this regard, we would like once again to congratulate the clarification of the Tucuman Court when it clarifies that “it is useful to state that in the case there is another phase of verification of institutional violence against the accused, now in the judicial sphere, in addition to the one mentioned Previously occurred within the framework of medical care provided to the young woman”

Finally, in the vote indicated, it is determined that

“This institutional violence in the medical and judicial spheres is immediately embedded with the gender issue, because many of the serious shortcomings pointed out would not have been verified in a case with a man as an alleged perpetrator. In order to know if gender stereotypes were present in this process, one only has to ask: had a conviction of aggravated homicide been reached because of the attachment of a man to a cause where the body of the crime was lost and there is no data to allow Know the effective relationship between victim and perpetrator? With an autopsy with incongruities such as the sex of the victim or her gestational age and with a cause of death not clearly and precisely determined? Would it have been supported that the defense did not make any proposal in front of these situations and did not propose proof of defense? Would the defense have been allowed to occur contrary to the position of innocence sustained in the statements and words of the accused at all times?”

We understand as a fundamental pillar for the progress in the guarantee of the human rights of women, the explicit acknowledgments of institutional violence of gender by the legal operators. These kinds of resolutions based on human rights and the recommendations and observations of the committees that supervise them, make visible the seriousness of these facts and contribute to the construction of behaviors deprived of stereotypes that denigrate, violate and violate citizens.

Lastly, it is worth mentioning the vote of Dr. Antonio Gandur, when he points out that

“Considers it pertinent and necessary to carry out a thorough training process through lectures, meetings and workshops by the Human Rights Secretariat of this Court in coordination with the agencies of the Siprosa (Provincial Health System) to inform medical operators Provincial the current legal framework as well as the appropriate way of acting on issues related to the present case.”

We hope that such instances of formation will be carried out with the main objective of guaranteeing the rights of the citizens, preventing and eradicating violence in the life of women, and the full enjoyment of their sexual and reproductive rights.

Contacto

Virginia Pedraza – vir.pedraza@fundeps.org

Mayca Irina Balaguer

The Board of Directors of the Faculty of Medicine of the National University of Rosario (UNR) voted, at the beginning of May, to incorporate an optional subject that addresses the practice of termination of pregnancy in cases permitted by law, such as Public health problem. From FUNDEPS, we celebrate the resolution.

“Below, we offer a google translate version of the original article in Spanish. This translation may not be accurate but serves as a general presentation of the article. For more accurate information, please switch to the Spanish version of the website. In addition, feel free to directly contact in English the person mentioned at the bottom of this article with regards to this topic”

The Faculty of Medicine of the UNR will be the first to have a chair on termination of pregnancy. Unanimously, the Board of Directors approved the incorporation of a matter that addresses the legal interruption of pregnancy (ILE), that is to say, in cases permitted by law, from a public health perspective, with the objective of training and / Future health professionals.

The subject will be optional and will seek, among other questions, to problematize medical students about the legal framework in force in Argentina, the regulation of conscientious objection and the process of care and attention of women at different levels of the situation Of the interruption of pregnancy. It will include counseling on contraceptive methods and teaching the use of available medical technologies to ensure an ILE.

Discontinuation of pregnancy is a public health problem as it represents the leading cause of maternal death. According to the Shadow Report presented by ANDES, CELS and FEIM, among other organizations, in Argentina, between 460,000 and 600,000 clandestine abortions are practiced annually before the Committee against Torture. Over the past 30 years, complications from unsafe abortions have been the leading cause of maternal mortality and account for one-third of all deaths. In this sense, it is urgent that the State guarantee a training in accordance with the law in force, which will enable medical professionals to approach the problem from a human rights perspective.

From FUNDEPS we support the initiative. It is the duty of the State to guarantee the conditions for women to enjoy the full enjoyment of their sexual and reproductive rights, and we consider that the training of our and our health professionals in this field is essential.

Author

Antonela Vanini

Contact

Virginia Pedraza, <vir.pedraza@fundeps.org>