03 Jun 2021

The Ministry of Health and Wellness plays a crucial role in empowering youth, women and other marginalised groups to make choices about their bodies without fear. 

This was said by the ministry’s assistant minister Mr Sethomo Lelatisitswe when launching the UNFPA state of the world 2021 population report on bodily autonomy, entitled My body is my own, yesterday. 

Mr Lelatisitswe said the ministry supported bodily autonomy, particularly sexual and reproductive health and rights. 

Through family planning programmes, he said, the ministry supported the increase and availability of contraceptives thereby empowering women to govern their bodies.

“The sexual reproductive health division is helping to make life saving services more accessible to reach areas as a way of leaving no one behind,” he said.

Mr Lelatisitswe said women and girls must be able to assert their autonomy in relation to sexual reproductive health regardless of geographical location.

 However, he said choices about contraceptives and reproductive health care were sometimes impeded by distance to health facilities, especially in rural areas.

Other impediments included the absence of youth-friendly services, shortage of preferred methods of contraceptives, poor quality services and lack of privacy, he said.

 Mr Lelatisitswe said there were many dimensions to the forces that prevented women, adolescent girls, people with disabilities and those with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities from enjoying bodily autonomy and integrity.

 “A root cause is gender discrimination, which reflects and sustains patriarchal systems of power and spawns gender inequality and disempowerment,” he sad.

  UNFPA official, Ms Mareledi Segotso stated that women had the right to make choices for their bodies without fear or being pressurized.

 She said the report noted that half of the world’s women lacked the right to make decisions about their own bodies.

 Ms Segotso stated that there would be no gender equality without bodily autonomy hence the need to have women make choices about  methods of contraception and forced marriages as well as marital rape stopped.

 For his part, UN resident coordinator, Mr Zia Choudhury underscored the need for countries to do more to achieve gender equality.ends