THE HUMAN RIGHTS RELATIVIZED. PROJECT PREVENTION’S CASES OF PAID STERILIZATION
Abstract
: In 2010 a coordinator of the Kenya Treatment Access Movement, James Kamau, announced that Project Prevention – the organization founded by Barbara Harris which pays HIV-positive or drug addicted women for a short- and long-term contraception, including irreversible sterilization – violates provisions against discrimination in the Kenyan HIV and AIDS Prevention and Control Act of 2006. Commentators add that Harris’ initiative violates also Kenyan women’s autonomy, reproductive interests and especially their human rights, and therefore they find it unambiguously wrong, unethical and evil. On the other hand, Harris defends her organization against these accusations by claiming that in fact it protects human rights and the other enlisted values. In this article we aim to present Project Prevention’s operations in Kenya and to demonstrate why answering a seemingly simple question – who was right in the dispute? – in current circumstances is impossible by definition. To illustrate that we show that it is mainly because of the human rights relative interpretations and we propose a political-philosophical solution to the discussed and similar problems in the future.
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