title: Facing negative reactions to sexuality education through a Multicultural Human Rights framework.
abstract: Sexuality education, its protocols and planning are contingent on an ever-changing political environment that characterizes the field of sexuality in most countries. In Brazil, human rights perspectives shaped the country's response to the AIDS epidemic, and indirectly influenced the public acceptability of sexuality education in schools. Since 2011, however, as multiple fundamentalist movements emerged in the region, leading to recurrent waves of backlashes in all matters related to sexuality, both health and educational policies have begun to crawl backwards. This article explores human rights-based approaches to health, focusing on a multicultural rights-based framework and on productive approaches to broadening the dialogue about sustained consent to sexuality education. Multicultural human rights (MHR) approaches are dialogical in two domains: the communication process that guarantees consent and community agreements and the constructionist psychosocial-educational methodologies. In its continuous process of consent, the MHR approach allowed for distinct values translation and diffused the resistance to sexuality education in the participant schools/cities, successfully sustaining notions of equality and protection of the right to a comprehensive sexuality education that does not break group solidarity and guarantees acceptability of differences.
authors.affiliation: Professor of Social Psychology, University of Sao Paulo, São Paulo, SP Brazil. Electronic address: veroca@usp.br.
authors.forename: Vera
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Paiva
authors.affiliation: Master in Preventive Medicine, Institute of Psychology/University of São Paulo, São Paulo, SP Brazil.
authors.forename: Valeria N
authors.initials: VN
authors.lastname: Silva
mesh_terms: D001290:Attitude; D001938:Brazil; D003142:Communication; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000517:prevention & control; D006806:Human Rights; D006801:Humans; D057766:Policy; D011247:Pregnancy; D049168:Pregnancy, Unplanned; D060728:Reproductive Health; D012736:Sex Education / Q000458:organization & administration*; D019529:Sexuality
keywords: HIV/AIDS; human rights; prevention; sexuality education; teenagers