Izugbara Chimaraoke O, Undie Chi-Chi
African Population and Heath Research Center, Nairobi, Kenya.
Reprod Health Matters. 2008 May;16(31):159-67. doi: 10.1016/S0968-8080(08)31344-5.
The realisation of sexual rights remains a daunting challenge in most of sub-Saharan Africa despite the articulation of these rights in several international documents and national laws. In this paper, we highlight a possible but neglected reason why this is so. Current sexual rights declarations derive from the notion that the body, as a physical entity, belongs to the individual. However, our work in two southeastern Nigerian cultures, the Ngwa-Igbo and the Ubang, shows that there is at least one alternative view of the body, which constructs it as the property of the wider community, rather than that of the individual. In the two cultures in question, rights are embodied in the community, which also lays powerful claims on all its members, including the claim of body ownership. Individuals are thus more likely to seek and realise their rights within the communal space, rather than by standing alone. The assumption that individuals always hold the ultimate right to their bodies is problematic and may constrain the effectiveness of rights-based programmes and interventions in general, and of work around sexual rights in particular.
尽管在若干国际文件和国家法律中已经阐明了性权利，但在撒哈拉以南非洲的大部分地区，性权利的实现仍然是一项艰巨的挑战。在本文中，我们强调了造成这种情况的一个可能但被忽视的原因。当前的性权利宣言源于这样一种观念，即身体作为一个物理实体，属于个人。然而，我们在尼日利亚东南部的两种文化——恩瓜-伊博文化和乌班文化——中的研究表明，至少存在另一种对身体的看法，即将身体视为更广泛社区的财产，而非个人的财产。在所讨论的这两种文化中，权利体现在社区中，社区也对其所有成员提出了强有力的要求，包括对身体所有权的要求。因此，个人更有可能在社区空间内寻求并实现自己的权利，而不是独自行动。认为个人始终对自己的身体拥有最终权利这一假设存在问题，可能会限制一般基于权利的方案和干预措施的有效性，尤其是围绕性权利开展的工作的有效性。
