The youth Across the country lead about Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH)

Today, DDG Jeanne Umuhire joined the Annual #AdolescentConference2025 on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, a platform bringing together young people from across the country to lead conversations and shape solutions on adolescent #SRH.

She reaffirmed #Rwanda’s commitment to advancing adolescent and youth health through bold initiatives such as Youth-Friendly Corners at health centers, comprehensive sexuality education in schools, and the new Health Law all designed to empower young people to confidently seek care, information, and support.

She further challenged the youth to fully utilize the spaces created by the Government and partners to seek information, ask questions, challenge norms, and innovate for improved access to health services among young people.

At the regional level, several policy harmonization efforts need to be brought to fruition if they are to have an impact on SRH at national level. Of course, traditional knowledge, attitude, belief and practice (KABP) also influences SRH, with the majority of the region’s population identifying as having religious or traditional faith, which influence adolescents’ choices when it comes to SRH and family planning.

It implements partners to advocate towards duty-bearers for them to develop or improve national and regional budgets and policies that advance adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health (ASRH), as well as ensuring that health service providers have quality assured ASRH services and commodities available.

Secondly, Solutions for Supporting Healthy Adolescents and Rights Protection (SHARP) also seeks to use inclusive multi-sector platforms to address ASHR and amplify the voices of key opinion leaders, including youth.