Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (YCSRR)

Julieta Zacatenco (she/her), Co-Executive Director

Being a SheDecides Champion means actively shifting power so that young people, women, BIPOC, and gender-diverse communities are not only represented, but resourced and positioned to lead decisions about their own lives. Bodily autonomy is non-negotiable because without control over our bodies there is no real collective liberation. Defending it requires more than policy commitments, it also demands strong, sustainable movements with the strategy, infrastructure, and long-term investment needed to shape agendas and hold power to account, ensuring youth-led leadership can drive lasting change.

María León González

Co-Executive Director

I believe that our power is in solidarity and collective action across organisations and movements to defend the rights we’ve achieved, and to build what’s missing. As a SheDecides Champion, this means working to better support young people in all their diversity to participate meaningfully and shape the political decisions that shape our lives. It means showcasing that young people have lived experience as the target of public policies, but also technical knowledge and long-term vision. Finally, It means being able to envision a future where we have full control of our bodies and our decisions free from coercion and violence, and to hold hope that as young advocates we can bring that future closer.

Why is bodily autonomy a priority for Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights?

Bodily autonomy is a priority for the YCSRR because it is the foundation upon which all other rights stand: without the power to make decisions about our own bodies, there is no real freedom or dignity. Centring bodily autonomy allows us to defend sexual and reproductive rights against coordinated attacks from anti-rights movements, while advancing a proactive, strategic agenda grounded in youth leadership and intersectional justice. This means confronting the systems of oppression like patriarchy, racism, colonialism, economic inequality, and heteronormativity that restrict choice and access, and simultaneously building cross-movement alliances, strengthening youth-led organising, and shaping global debates.

How does YCSRR work towards a world where SheDecides?

YCSRR works through movement and partnership building, knowledge generation and sharing, capacity building, and advocacy. We believe that the youth movement needs to be strong in order to place our concerns on the table, and that young people are the experts in our own realities! Check out our advocacy priorities below:

Safe Abortion

We advocate for increased awareness on the barriers that young people and adolescents face when trying to access abortion, particularly youth at the margins. Our recent work touches on self-managed abortion as a tool for bodily autonomy, for resisting the restrictions imposed by the state on the right to choose, and for preventing the violence that people face, too, within the health systems. Abortion is essential healthcare, and we defend the access of all young people to the right to choose and their right to interrupt their pregnancies in a caring environment of their choice.

Comprehensive Sexuality Education

As the YCSRR, advocating for Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) is one of our advocacy priorities! Young people must be at the centre of CSE because an approach that understands the lived realities of young people is the most effective way of realising young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights. We advocate for intersectional youth leadership and meaningful youth engagement on CSE policy, curriculum design, implementation, and accountability across all spheres. We must listen to young people in the conversation around CSE because it directly affects their lives!

Climate Crisis and SRHR

Bold, transformative, youth-centred analysis and actions that foreground the impact of climate change on SRHR, particularly for young people in the Global South, are a priority for YCSRR. We are currently working on expanding our advocacy around this topic!

Bodily Autonomy

In our advocacy approach, bodily autonomy of young people, particularly those marginalised by different systems of oppression. This is prioritised as central to strategic SRHR policy initiatives, including the SRHR aspect of the HIV response, the defense of LGBTQIA+ rights and gender affirming healthcare, and our advocacy to stop harmful practices.

Meaningful Youth Engagement

One of our advocacy priorities is to strengthen youth-led, youth-driven advocacy. This needs to be recognised and integrated within global, regional, and national decision-making spaces. Youth are the experts in our own realities, and need to be meaningfully engaged for truly transformative SRHR programs and policies!

About the Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (YCSRR)

Youth Coalition is an international organisation of young people (ages 18-29 years) committed to promoting adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive rights at the national, regional and international levels. We are students, researchers, lawyers, health care professionals, educators, development workers, and most importantly, we are all dedicated activists.

WHENSHE DECIDES