Reframing rights, culture, and health: unpacking global dynamics in the sexuality education literature

Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) has become a key international framework for addressing young people’s sexual and reproductive health, rights and wellbeing. Promoted by United Nations agencies, CSE is informed by universal principles of human rights and gender equality, while also emphasising cultural sensitivity and local adaptation. However, the relationship between these universal frameworks and diverse local contexts remains contested and insufficiently examined. This study critically examined how the academic literature conceptualises rights, culture and health in sexuality education, focusing on their framing and their relationship within global North-South power dynamics. Through a review of 70 academic papers published between 1988 and 2020, we trace how these core concepts were defined, prioritised and positioned in relation to one another. Our analysis indicates a predominantly Northern rights-based paradigm in which culture is framed as a contextual challenge commonly encountered in the Global South, while health is positioned within a narrow, risk-oriented biomedical framework. Building on existing critiques, we argue for a more nuanced engagement with health and culture that remain grounded in rights-based principles, while recognising the potential to reposition health and culture as legitimate and enabling components of comprehensive sexuality education.