Domesticating Cairo And Beijing

Abstract

This seminar highlights the prospects and opportunities for Nigerian law to protect reproductive and sexual rights, and the willingness and capacity of the legal system to affirm women's reproductive health as human rights within the domiciliary region. Dr Aniekwu's research found that the entrenchment of reproductive and sexual health clauses in state laws and government policies are critical indications that the Nigerian legal system has the capacity to domesticate international obligations and protect reproductive and sexual health rights in national legislation(s).

In this paper, Dr Aniekwu acknowledges that, despite the proliferation of the term 'reproductive rights' in universal instruments and national policies in the past fifteen years, the transformative nature of the rights framework for reproductive health in Nigeria has remained legally unexplored.  She examines the legal rhetoric in Nigeria, the existing challenges to the realization of reproductive and sexual rights, the justification in contemporary society, and the prospects of achieving international standards within the State.  Regional analogies and references to reproductive rights protection in other African jurisdictions are made, where appropriate, to expose the possibilities inherent in such a discourse, and the substantive and workable strategies that can be adopted in Nigeria.  While recognizing the diverging political and social constructs that converge on these objectives and the challenges for a feminist discourse on reproductive and sexual rights in many African territories, the overall intention of my research has been to affirm the health and human rights philosophies that respect, promote and fulfill the protection of reproductive and sexual rights in Africa and around the world.

Biography

Nkoli Aniekwu PhD teaches Legal Method and Research at the Department of Public Law, University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria. Her book Legal Methodology and Research in Nigeria was described by Professor Susanne Karstedt of the School of Law, University of Leeds as "a classic text in empirical and legal research methods." 

Nkoli Aniekwu is a member of the Management Board of the Centre for Gender Studies and former Head, Department of Public Law, Faculty of Law, University of Benin.

The Gender Institute is delighted to welcome Nkoli to the Gender Institute as a Visting Fellow from October 2010.