Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (YCSRR)
Eunice García, Executive Director
As the Executive Director of the Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (YCSRR), being a SheDecides champion represents an opportunity to show how powerful, resilient, and caring youth leadership can be in the fight to conquer bodily autonomy for all! It also means approaching the work that I do from an anti-oppressive lens, taking care to dismantle systems of oppression - like sexism, ageism, racism, colonialism, and others - that limit the engagement of young people in advocacy spaces.
Why is bodily autonomy a priority for Youth Coalition for Sexual and Reproductive Rights?
YCSRR works to defend sexual and reproductive rights from a bodily autonomy perspective because we believe that, at the heart of our common fight, is the respect for the intrinsic human right to make choices about our own lives and bodies. All young people, everywhere, should have the right to choose! In order to achieve bodily autonomy, we need to work from an intersectional perspective and dismantle the systems of oppression that stop those at the margins from making informed choices, free from violence and coercion.
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.
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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!
Read MoreClimate 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!
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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.
Read MoreMeaningful 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.
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