Adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health rights emphasised

Experts stressed the need to ensure proper sexual and reproductive health rights for adolescents.

They made the call at a roundtable discussion titled ‘Family Planning/SRHR and Adolescents in Bangladesh: What are the priority issues?’ jointly organised by the Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC) and UNFPA in collaboration with an English daily on Wednesday.

PPRC Executive Chairman Hossain Zillur Rahman moderated the discussion session.

Participants at the roundtable said that discussion about the sexual and reproductive rights of teenagers has been regarded as a social taboo in Bangladesh. This is one of the reasons why the problem has not been addressed properly.

They also said that marginalised people lack access to proper sexual and reproductive healthcare. To combat the challenges, the issue must be addressed and proper advocacy must be conducted. At the same time, the engagement of parents and in-laws must be ensured to provide safe family planning for adolescents in the country.

Tailoring family planning programmes and ensuring male participation and access to SRHR for married/unmarried adolescents is one of the significant objectives of this roundtable.

Moreover, focusing on the unmet needs of family planning, assuring more social awareness, and creating demand for FP services through advocacy were other key purposes of this session.

Dr Mainul Islam, Professor, Department of Population Sciences, University of Dhaka, delivered the introductory speech and tried to summarize the context of the roundtable discussion.

He marked the Cairo conference as a paradigm shift. While presenting the data, information, and graphs, he said that promoting age-appropriate comprehensive sexual education and focusing on the unmarried youth population would help us reach the goal of ensuring proper sexual and reproductive healthcare and rights.

Dr Fatema Shabnam, adolescent and youth specialist at Pathfinder, underlined the fact that we lack proper and updated data. Also, she proposed that "the engagement of parents and in-laws must be ensured if we want to provide safe family planning for adolescent girls."