I get to do a lot of cool things in my role at the Oxford Human Rights Hub – and this is one of them. We partnered with the World Health Organization to produce a five-part documentary series on sexual and reproductive health rights across the globe. Last year, I got to film in Oxford, Geneva, and Nairobi alongside Suzy Shepherd, a great videographer we hired for the project. We sweated it out in the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on what must have been the hottest day ever in Switzerland, and we spent hours observing the rhythms of everyday life in the waiting rooms of reproductive health clinics in Nairobi. I love switching gears from interviewing for research to interviewing for film (or podcasts) because it stretches the translational muscles that enable us to communicate complex ideas to wider audiences. I hope we’ve done some of that translating effectively here.
I stepped back from this particular project a few months ago, and Suzy has brilliantly and beautifully taken it over the finish line. I’m delighted to share Shaping the Future – a mini documentary series exploring sexual and reproductive health rights in the contexts of school and the workplace, as well as looking in detail at how to realise the right to safe childbirth, and access to abortion. Later on, there will also be an episode on Universal Health Care in Kenya. Shaping the Future series take a comparative perspective and closely examines how the strong moral and legal imperatives of human rights can be given detailed substance by grounding them in local context and making sexual and reproductive health a reality to each individuals’ lived experiences.
Check out the videos on the Oxford Human Rights Hub (or WHO) YouTube channels, and linked below.
Kira Allmann 