DAWN has been advancing a Southern feminist perspective in the Human Rights Council (HRC) to contribute to an expansion of the policy space for incorporating gender perspectives into the diverse and interrelated themes of human development and human rights. The network has been present during the sessions of the HRC and, in so doing, has come to work closely with key human rights and sexuality rights groups. The debates around sexual rights and sexuality have evolved substantially over the past decades. Women and feminists have joined other sexual rights-related social movements to produce substantive analysis on specific sexuality-related themes and policies. This has been a positive process, as it has provided specific social movements (for example, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex people, women’s groups, young people, sex workers and HIV/AIDS groups, among others) the opportunity to empower themselves and strengthen their analyses. However, there remains the need to strengthen dialogues among sexual rights advocates and, even within sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) movements, to capture diverse and multiple areas and dynamics.
Together with other groups that are also engaged in negotiations and processes at the United Nations, DAWN has formed an informal gender caucus in the HRC. Through Angela Collet, the network actively works with the caucus to push for the integration of a gender perspective throughout the work of the Council, including its special procedures. Other areas of the HRC that demand gender analyses, and where DAWN is engaged, include special mandates on critical ecological concerns such as toxic and dangerous products and wastes, the right to food, and access to safe drinking water and sanitation. DAWN believes that the Council can effectively contribute toward illuminating the linkages between the devastating health and livelihood effects of environmental degradation, the increasing impoverishment of women and human rights violations worldwide.
