EMPOWERING YOUTH TO ADVOCATE FOR THEIR SRH RIGHTS

March 03, 2018.

Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRH&R) including Family Planning (FP) information and services amongst adolescents and youth in Tanzania is a growing challenge. Teenage pregnancies in the country have become a growing SRHR challenging. Latest data from the Demographic Health and Survey (DHS) 2015-2016 shows that the rate has increased from 23% in 2010 to 27% in 2015. There are a number of factors contributing to teenage pregnancies incidences in Tanzania. Some of them include socioeconomic status of the teenagers and their families; cultural, religious and social norms; poor education; sexual and gender based violence; lack of comprehensive sexuality education; inadequate access to adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health services

While youth below 17 years old comprise 50.1% of the total Tanzanian population (Census, 2012). By denying this population group right to FP information and services imply denying the right of majority of Tanzanians. The National Policy Guidelines for SRH Service Provision and Training has stipulated clearly eligibility to FP information and services by individuals regardless of age and sex or marital status. However, the young people are not aware of their eligibility to SRH information and services as stipulated in the Policy Guidelines. On their side, parents and politicians oppose the access to contraception information and services by young people fearing it may fuel engagement in irresponsible sexual behavior among the group.
Despite good policies and guidelines the government has put in place to ensure that every adolescent has full access to SRHR information and services and the commitments the government have made by signing multiple international agreements, there has been minimal efforts in their implementation. Youth who are the key stakeholders and beneficiaries of these programs are usually left behind. SRHR needs for youth has for many years fallen between cracks of development and financial spending plans and priorities of both, central and local council governments. The number of youths in the decision making tables is not proportional to the youth population in the country.
Many organizations have attempted to reach out to youth with FP information, education and services. However, their approach has been more for young people but hardly by young people. The reason behind has often being young people have no capacity to stand before decision makers and articulate their needs. By understanding the importance of youth engagement in ensuring accountability, TMEPID and a youth coalition known as Tanzania Adolescents and Youth Reproductive Health (TAYARH) Coalition with support from Advance Family Planning (AFP) Tanzania and Tanzania Communication and Development Centre (TCDC) conducted a SMART Advocacy orientation workshop for members of 30 youth-led organizations from 6 different regions in Tanzania to be SRHR advocates and champions by integrating FP into their programs. These organizations from Mbeya, Lindi, Mtwara, Tanga, Morogoro and Dodoma work in a variety of thematic areas such as environmental issues, youth development, poverty alleviation, health, HIV, legal issues and Human Rights. Although many of them claimed to have been doing advocacy within their scope of work, the SMART Approach seemed to be something new and very exciting. The idea that advocacy should be targeting key decision makers and should aim at bringing about sustainable solution sounded like something they wanted to learn. .
During these workshops, representatives from these organizations were able to come up with their own SMART objectives and work plans. These objectives varied depending on the area of interest and technical expertise of a particular organization. They ranged from increasing access to FP services, to provision of comprehensive sexuality education to environmental conservation. We did learn that many of existing youth groups are not focusing at adolescents and youth FP because of little awareness they have on SRH rights. None of the 29 organization representatives had ever heard or seen the National SRH Policy Guidelines for Service Provision and Training. The guidelines stipulated eligibility of adolescents to SRHR information and services.
After orienting them to SRHR and demographic dividends prior to introducing them to SMART advocacy strategy formulation, more than half of the teams of trainees changed their focus and developed strategies aimed to improve adolescent and youth RH. The facilitator and TAYARH team supported these organizations to sharpen their work plans and encouraged them to explore different means for resource mobilization to enable their implementation. Four of these organizations managed to submit their proposals for grants to PAI Youth Access fund and FP2020 Rapid Response Mechanism Youth Outreach grant. Although the odds are that they are less likely to be funded because of the poor organizational capacity, this is still a big success to them and TAYARH Coalition.
A big lesson we learnt was that many youth organizations would wish to embark on advocating for youth SRHR but they are handicapped with knowledge about it. TAYARH and TMEPID plan to work jointly to build capacity of these youth organizations to train on SRH and Rights in addition to scaling-up advocacy training in 2018.
TMEPiD and TAYARH with support from AFP Tanzania and TCDC will work in partnership to build capacity of the coalition member youth organization in addressing issues of SRH rights and formation of social accountability committees in their respective councils that will track availability of contraceptives method mix and accessibility by youth.
Tanzanian Government aims to increase provision of youth friendly services from existing 30% of the health facilities to 80% by year 2020.