Capacity and Consent: Empowering Adolescents to Exercise their Reproductive Rights
With adolescents and youth constituting a quarter of the global population – for a total of 1.8 billion people – it has never been more critical that their human rights be fully recognized and realized within global arenas and at the regional, national, and community level.
This publication sets forth the barriers adolescents face in realizing their sexual and reproductive health and rights, discusses recent critical developments in the human rights framework underpinning these rights, and proposes a way forward for guaranteeing all adolescents the full exercise of their sexual and reproductive health and rights, including their right to make informed decisions about their sexuality and reproduction.
In this regard, it urges that adolescents’ physical and reproductive autonomy and bodily integrity must be understood as core pillars of their sexual and reproductive health and rights. It further calls for greater recognition of adolescents’ agency and right to make decisions about their sexual and reproductive health and rights. Finally, it examines the barriers adolescents’ face in seeking access to justice when their rights are violated.
The publication is available on the Center for Reproductive Rights’s website via this link.
