Young people face many obstacles to their sexual and reproductive health and rights, and they must work with government and partners to rectify this. “We know you have many challenges [such as] high teenage pregnancy and HIV rates in the area, but you can’t give up," said local ward Councillior Ernest Ndumo.

Fifty years ago, it was hard for women to obtain contraception and relatively easy to die giving birth. Many women were unable to decide whom and when to marry, and when or whether to have children. A worldwide movement to give women real choices in life culminated in the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), where a consensus was reached about the links between women’s empowerment, sex...

The global reproductive rights movement that began in the 1960s transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of women, empowering them to govern their own bodies and shape their own futures. But despite the gains made over the past 50 years, since the establishment of UNFPA, the world still has a long way to go before rights and choices are claimed by all, according to the State of World Population 2019, released by...