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The US Supreme Court in a 6-2 decision ruled that the Policy Requirement of the Anti-Prostitution Loyalty Oath, from the U.S. Leadership Act of 2003, violated the First Amendment, and is therefore unconstitutional. It implies that US organisations working overseas on HIV prevention no longer have to comply with this provision, which unfortunately still does apply to the foreign organisations including that sex workers led groups.

Inability to exercise SRHR results in many acts of violence against women including rape, forced sterilisation, early marriage, female genital mutilation and assaults against transgendered individuals and those in same sex relationships.

..violence against women also constitute systematic denial, withholding and obstruction of access to reproductive health services, including access to safe and legal abortion because of its detrimental effect on the lives of women and girls. This type of violence is structural or institutional violence.

Women´s Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR) has submitted a response to the Questionnaire for input into the Report of the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders in Africa: Women Human Rights Defenders and those working on women’s rights and gender issues. As a worldwide network of community level organisations and activists working in advocacy […]

Jalila Khamis Koko is a member of the opposition party Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement – North (SPLM-N), which was banned in September 2011. She is a member of the Nuba ethnic group from Southern Kordofan. She was arrested on 15 March 2012 at her home in the capital, Khartoum, by agents of the National Security Services (NSS). She was transferred to Omdurman prison, after spending three months in solitary confinement in the NSS detention centre, where she has been detained ever since. During this time, her physical and mental state has considerably deteriorated.

On the occasion of the 16 Days of Action Campaign; WGNRR calls on governments, international organisations, national human rights activists and international partners to include institutional violence that is generated by the lack of access to reproductive health services, including safe and legal abortion, into your advocacy agenda to combat violence against women. Equally, we are calling for the inclusion of policies that will protect human rights defenders; and particularly the advocates of access to safe and legal abortion. With protective policies in place, WHRD are able to carry out their work free of stigma, discrimination, and fear of violence and death.

We, a group of civil society activists and advocates for sexual and reproductive health and rights, are writing to you to express our concern about the recent death of Savita Halappanavar, who was repeatedly denied an abortion in Galway. This tragic case demonstrates, once again, that the prohibition of abortion in Ireland is not just undermining the autonomy of the women across the country; it is leading to unacceptable suffering and even death.

…systematic denial and withholding of access to safe and legal abortion through restrictive laws on the one hand and through obstructing access to services on the other hand constitutes an act of institutional violence which has a detrimental effect in the lives of all women in need of safe abortion services, specifically impacting the most marginalised groups such as young unmarried women, women with disabilities, HIV positive women, ethnic minorities, sex workers, LGBT and others.