Racing Populations, Sexing Environments: the Challenges of a Feminist Politics in International Law

This article offers a critique of the feminist politics that have influenced international law developments in the area of reproductive rights by looking specifically at the Programme of Action drafted at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo. The author finds that while significant progress was made in the discourse on, and conceptualization of, the role and equality of women in population and reproductive health policies, the Cairo agreement continues to reinforce conceptions of the fertilization of Southern women as dangerous or threatening. The author argues that in so doing, the agreement perpetuates international racial and socio-economic biases related to the portrayal of overpopulation as a primary source of the developing world's economic and environmental problems which makes the fertility of the Southern, non-white, impoverished women a focus of international law and politics. The author challenges the language and assumptions used in linking population growth with environmental protection and economic development, and recommends that feminists engage the racial and colonial dimensions of their reproductive rights and population growth politics.