Women with disabilities have been systematically denied the right to free and informed consent, bodily autonomy and self-determination in making choices about SRH, leading to forced sterilization, abortion and contraception. This underscored why there is an urgent need to ensure SRHR advocacy addresses the rights and needs of women with disabilities. This session aims stakeholders from both movements, and will lay the groundwork for critical advocacy to address these intersectional rights issues. This session is convened by CREA; Kenyan Women with Disability Network; Women with Disability India Network.

Francophone countries in West and Central Africa have the highest rates of maternal mortality and lowest rates of contraceptive prevalence in the world. Underfunding and lack of political will at the national and international level enable the numerous barriers the region faces to implement the ICPD Programme of Action and achieve Agenda 2030. This session will take stock of progress in the region and outstanding challenges related to the full realization of SRHR, with a focus on the implementation of the Maputo Protocol in Francophone Africa. It will bring together researchers, service providers, decision-makers, lawyers and CSO activists, and showcase best practices for preventing and managing unintended pregnancies. Participants will also highlight actions needed to inspire change at the normative, operational and partnership levels.This session will be held in French and is convened by Médecins du Monde France, Le Planning Familial, Association des Femmes Juristes du Burkina Faso and Equipop.

Twenty-five years on, the reality of the ICPD Programme of Action is that its agenda has too often taken a global focus at the expense of local-level progress. The aim of this session is to bring together an inter-generational group of leaders and change-makers to exchange best practices, policy objectives and strategies that inspire change at the local level, and to apply these lessons to better implement the ICPD Programme of Action at the local level. This concurrent session will move ICPD25 from global to local by empowering young people to be the drivers of change in their own communities and have their sexual and reproductive health and rights fulfilled. This event will be convened by Rutgers, HIVOS, Choice of Youth and Sexuality and Dance4Life.

In many Arab States in the MENA region, youth-friendly health services have been provided for several years, operated thanks to partnership between the organizations and youth. This concurrent session will demonstrate a successful example of advocating for youth-friendly health services, drawing on the experience of The Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) and Y-PEER Network. The session will showcase the importance of peer education within mobile clinics as well as university health centers, both of which improve accessibility to sexual and reproductive health and rights and help mitigate the negative norms and factors that impede young people’s access to SRHR. The session will also engage audience participants in a lively discussion to highlight the challenges and opportunities related to applying this model to other contexts. This session is convened by Palestinian Medical Relief Society; Y-PEER - Palestine, Tunisia, Morocco, Syria.

The rights, voices and choices of girls and young women are —and must remain — at the very center of realizing the ICPD Programme of Action. Without taking girls into account, in programme design as well as in programme leadership, both the Programme of Action and Agenda 2030 are in peril. This panel discussion will highlight successful programmes and interventions to advance the ICPD agenda through approaches created with and for girls, taking a cross-cutting thematic approach to different priority areas within the SRHR agenda. Participants can expect to leave equipped with lessons and recommendations to meaningfully involve young women and girls in programme design and leadership that can be replicated in their own contexts and countries. This session will be convened by Girl Determined (Myanmar) Hacey Health Initiative (Nigeria), NGO Atina (Serbia) and Roots of Health (Philippines).

Social accountability is a process by which citizens can hold politicians and policy makers accountable for the services the provide. It enables communities to address corruption, increase trust in public servants and governments, and become key players in setting agendas for policy processes and health systems. This concurrent session will apply the tools of social accountability to access to SRHR, drawing from the example of a social accountability programme in Kabale, Uganda. The aim of the session is to empower participants, who will engage in a mock citizen hearing, to actively address policy issues in their own communities. It will focus in particular on how power and inequality impact access to health services for vulnerable communities, and how to counteract these dynamics. This event will be convened by Kabale Women in Development and Amref Health Africa in Uganda.