Where Human Rights Begin: Health, Sexuality, and Women in the New Millennium

More than a decade ago, three landmark world conferences placed the human rights of women on the international agenda. The first, in Vienna, officially extended the definition of human rights to include a woman's right to self-determination and equality. A year later, in Cairo, this concept was elaborated to deal explicitly with issues of sexuality and procreation. Subsequently, at a conference in Beijing, the international community committed to a wide range of practical interventions to advance women's sexual, social, political, and economic rights. Despite these accomplishments, however, we find ourselves today at an ever more difficult juncture in the struggle to fully realize women's rights as human rights. Complications, such as terrorism and the "war" against it, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the incursion of religious fundamentalism into governments, and the U.S. government's retreat from the international agenda on sexual and reproductive rights have raised questions about the direction of policy implementations and have prevented progress from being straightforward. This timely collection brings together eight wide-reaching and provocative essays that examine the practical and theoretical issues of reproductive health policy and implementation. Contributors, including well-known scholars and policy makers, assess the impact of policies that have been initiated and consider future directions that governments must take in order to translate visionary ideas into actual achievements.