​World Sexual Health Day
“Sexuality Education for All: A Bridge to Sexual Health”

The World Association for Sexual Health (WAS), founded in 1978, promotes sexual health throughout the world by developing and supporting sexology and sexual rights for all. Our membership represents more than 100 organizations and thousands of experienced and trained sexologists from a variety of disciplines across the world.
The aim of WAS is to generate greater social awareness around the world about the importance of achieving full sexual health for all people. WAS members and organizations related to sexual health, including government agencies and NGOs, promote the WAS Declaration of Sexual Rights on World Sexual Health Day (WSHD), celebrated every September 4th since 2010.
In order to ensure the development of a healthy sexuality, free of discomfort, risks, suffering, guilt and shame, sexual rights must be recognized, promoted, respected, protected and defended by all societies, through all available means.
Sexual rights include the right to comprehensive science-based sexuality education which fosters the ability to make free, responsible decisions, and the autonomous exercise of other sexual rights. In this sense, sexuality education is an essential condition to achieve the full well-being of people and the development of their health (Science-Based Sexuality Education, Madrid Consensus Paper, 2012).
That is why this year we highlight the importance of Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) for people of all ages, social groups, and in all cultural contexts, as stated in the preamble of the WAS Declaration of Sexual Rights. This year our goal is to highlight that all people of all ages without exclusion must have access to comprehensive sexuality education.
World Sexual Health Day is a global celebration that operates on a voluntary basis and to date, more than 40 countries have participated in multiple initiatives. These have been published on the official WAS Global Facebook page of World Sexual Health Day (www.facebook.com/4sept/ in English and www.facebook.com/DMSS4sept/ in Spanish).
WAS invites everyone to join the celebration in their own country and to organize their own activities. Because WAS would like to ensure that sexual health issues are widely discussed everywhere, we suggest involving different organizations and institutions (health institutions, schools, universities, patient organizations, as well as NGOs or CBOs that advocate for health and sexual and reproductive health and rights).
The motto for the 2019 World Sexual Health Day is Sexuality Education For All: A Bridge to Sexual Health (diamundialsaludsexual.org/).
To assist in achieving sexuality education and sexual health for all, we request that you send letters to your governments and political representatives to have the United Nations officially proclaim September 4th as World Sexual Health Day. There is a model letter to use in the resources section of the website www.worldsexualhealthday.org.
Where can you find more information?
• Websites: www.worldsexualhealthday.org and www.diamundialsaludsexual.org
• Official pages of Global WSHD on Facebook (versions in English and Spanish): www.facebook.com/4sept/ and hwww.facebook.com/DMSS4sept
• Email: worldsexualhealthday@gmail.com
• Twitter: @SexualHealthDay (in English) or @DiaSaludSexual (in Spanish)
 
WSHD Committee