US Officially Adopts Term `Sexual Rights` to Push Global Social Agenda

  19 September 2015    Read: 899
US Officially Adopts Term `Sexual Rights` to Push Global Social Agenda
The US government for the first time will officially use the term "sexual rights" in international negotiations on human rights and global development, according to media reports.
The adoption of the term marks a “significant shift” in policy, the Christian Science Monitor stated on Friday.

The use of the term in diplomatic talks on sexual and reproductive rights will help the US government focus more effectively on combatting early child marriage and HIV/AIDS prevention, supporters of the term argue, according to the report.

The use of the new term was announced before the UN General Assembly convenes for its annual main session later this month in New York City.

At the UN General Assembly session, hundreds of world leaders will “meet and lay out a variety of sustainable development goals aimed at eliminating poverty and hunger by 2030,” the Christian Science Monitor report said.

One of the goals given priority by the Obama administration is the empowerment of women around the world and strengthening their sexual rights and the right to have abortions on demand, termed “reproductive rights,” by US activists, according to the report.

The use of the new term followed “heavy lobbying from lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender groups,” the report noted.

Women’s rights activists hope that the use of the term will be useful in making US foreign policy more conditional on recipient governments taking effective action on implementing sexual rights and related issues in their own countries, according to the report.

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