Government Ministers, Heads of Institutions and UN agencies are gathering on the sidelines of UNGA to rise up for abortion rights. Political leaders at the forefront of abortion law reform will reflect on global advances and the need to to secure safe and legal abortions as essential healthcare for all people, everywhere.

Authored by Shruti Arora, this blog was written for and first published on GenderIT.org. 

By Lindiwe Zulu, Minister for Social Development, South Africa and Meryame Kitir, Minister for Development Cooperation and Major Cities Policy, Belgium. 

Young people are essential to holding governments, CSOs and movements accountable for SRHR actions and commitments to be effectively achieved for the youth population.

We are delighted to welcome Memory Kachambwa, Executive Director of FEMNET, as new Chair the SheDecides Guiding Group. 

Memory is an awe-inspiring pan African feminist and gender and women’s rights activist. She is a dynamic and resourceful leader in movement building and policy advocacy, a cultural thought leader and a skilled feminist strategist. We are looking forward to working with Memory & Jona in their roles as Chair and Vice Chair of the Guiding Group, respectively! 

The United States Supreme Court decision to reverse Roe v Wade and roll back 50 years of safe abortion access and care is a catastrophic blow that will impact the lives of millions of women and girls.

At SheDecides+5 - the celebration of five years of the SheDecides movement - governments reaffirmed their support for SheDecides.

Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) is the cornerstone to creating a safer, more inclusive and more gender-equal world, where all young people have access to good health, well-being and quality education. Yet in conservative contexts there is significant religious, cultural and political opposition to CSE, driven by myths and misconceptions about what it is. On the sidelines of the SheDecides+5 meeting being held in Brussels, Joanna Herat, Senior Programme Specialist / Team Leader: Sexuality Education, SRH and Gender at UNESCO - which co-convenes the Global Partnership on CSE - discusses why schools and teachers are critical to implement CSE, and how UNESCO supports them and other authorities to develop and implement quality CSE in and out of schools.

Julia Bunting: As President of the Population Council—a US-based nonprofit committed to ensuring people have the information, services and supplies to advance their sexual and reproductive health and rights — I am proud to join my fellow SheDecides champions in Brussels. Together, we will celebrate the victories of the past five years, redouble our efforts in the face of emerging attacks on bodily autonomy, and set our priorities for the next five years.

When young people are meaningfully included, they build their capacity, ensure their continued access to discussions and decision-making spaces, assert their agency, and hold decision makers to account, say the SheDecides Youth Accountability Panel (Chrisly, Christina, Daniel, Evelyn, Gaearóid, Juliana, Mogau, Pushpa and Rym)