17 MAR | SEXRWA Webinar: Fleecing Senegalese Women

Sexual and reproductive rights were inscribed explicitly in human rights instruments during the 1990’s. While initially, especially during the 1970’s, they were promoted in the framework of health under the banner of reproductive rights, these have widened considerably.Interventions have been designed from the macro-political level to the grassroots level. Nevertheless, the juridical and political nature of these instruments of international law, translated locally, creates forms of biopolitics that aren’t always aligned with local practices, thus promoting some resistancies. A critical approach to this intersection is necessary, and the adequacy of transnational human rights language to sociocultural specificities should be questioned (Merry, 2012), because as Didier Fassin points out moral sentiments have become a driving force in contemporary politics (Fassin, 2012). This project analyses this in two west African countries, Guinea Bissau and Senegal.

By looking in a critical perspective into the local activisms and the changing sociocultural practices, in relation with their social histories, we consider a field where local and international actors both develop discourses. We pay particular attention to public discussions around dividing issues such as gender equality, sexual rights, gender based violence, abortion, planned reproduction, gender roles, but also to legislation and its enforcement, or the financing of local agents in the field of international human rights.

For these SEXRWA Webinars we invited scholars developing research on subjects we consider to have important correlations with our main objectives. With them we would like to widen the scope of the discussions on sexual and reproductive rights in Guinea Bissau and Senegal, to take into account local social dynamics.

This project is hosted at CEI-Iscte, and is financed by FCT (PTDC/SOC-ANT/31675/2017)