World Sexual Health Day - September 4
Each year, the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS) celebrates World Sexual Health Day on September 4th. This year’s theme is “Turn it on: Sexual health in a digital world”, which inspires the need to awaken awareness of sexual health rights, while also recognizing the harms and violations of sexual rights in the digital sphere.
World Sexual Health Day is an awareness day managed by the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS), a global advocacy organization committed to promoting best practices in sexual health. It attempts to break down social and cultural taboos associated with sexuality and to promote positive sexual health around the world.
World Sexual Health Day has been celebrated in 60 countries since 2010, with a wide range of activities from Round Tables of Discussion to Conferences and Art Exhibitions. Country organizers have taken WSHD activities to schools, media, hospitals, libraries, universities, public squares, art halls, theatre groups, etc. WAS wants to ensure that sexual health issues are discussed everywhere.
According to the guidelines released by the World Sexual Health Committee, the reason for choosing this year’s motto “Turn it on” is the message of igniting awareness of sexual health and sexual rights —and enforcing them—as there are also many violations and abuses of sexual rights in the digital space.
“We live in a world that does not differentiate between digital and analog to connect in our relationships, in the exchange of ideas and in our learning. The digital world has become an everyday space in which we spend many moments of our day to day, where we have universal connections that allow us to access and expand content and information to promote sexual health and sexual rights through the dissemination of appropriate messages.
The implementation of the Smartphone in people’s daily lives has not only revealed the penetration of technology in daily life, but also the opportunity to take advantage of technological incidence as a potential tool to educate from communication.”
The promotion of sexual health is central to the attainment of wellness and well-being and the achievement of sustainable development and more specifically to the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals. Individuals and communities who experience well-being are better positioned to contribute to the eradication of individual and societal poverty. By nurturing individual and social responsibility and equitable social interactions, the promotion of sexual health fosters quality of life and the realization of peace.
Disseminate and advertise World Sexual Health Day thru the hashtags #WorldSexualHealthDay2021 or #WSHD2021 or #turniton to create visibility for your projects and initiatives.
Sources:
https://whri.org/world-sexual-health-day-2021/
https://worldsexualhealth.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/millennium-declaration-english.pdf