RETHINKING GENDERS, SEXUALITIES AND HUMAN RIGHTS
A ten-day seminar course
Open Space/ Centre for Communication and Development Studies (CCDS), Pune

Open Space/CCDS conducted a 10 day seminar course on gender and human rights issues in May 2005.

The aim of the course was to establish linkages and study the interactions between human rights, feminist jurisprudence and Queer Theory and activism. It discussed problematic topics within human rights theory, discourse and practice as a way of forging new ideas and practices.

Built around the discussion of selected readings, case studies, films and group work/ activities, the seminar examined the contemporary women's movement and the human rights movement's engagements with law and sexuality in post-colonial India.

The impetus behind the course was to try and identify the contesting claims for rights and examine how certain basic human rights principles like universality (that have, over time, become a tool for exclusion) could be re-formulated. In this context, one of the central debates that was discussed was universality vs. cultural relativism. The course introduced participants to the formal human rights systems in India and at the international level.

The course examined developments since the promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, those concerning how gender has come to be integrated into the Declaration and how sexual justice is increasingly becoming part of an international agenda of human rights.

Overall, the course attempted to inquire into the role of the law in promoting, protecting and fulfilling claims for sexual rights by challenging the myth that more rights equal more empowerment.

ORGANISERS

Rethinking Genders, Sexualities and Human Rights was conceptualized and put together by Human Rights Lawyer and Researcher, Oishik Sircar and organized and coordinated by Open Space/ CCDS .

For Public Talk by Meena Seshu click >>
For participant's responses click >>