Vulnerable youth or vulnerabilising contexts?: a critical review of youth Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) policies in Eastern and Southern Africa

Abstract

Policy decisions about young people’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) have far-reaching implications for their well-being. Few SRHR policies, however, focus specifically on youth. Rather, youth SRHR tends to be subsumed within national policies of Health, Youth, Education and Development Ministries, particularly in the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) region, complicating an assessment of the overall state of youth SRHR policies. Given the fact that youth SRHR policies focus on a particular segment of the population—youth, teenagers or adolescents—how policies depict these subjects has implications for how policy objectives, programmes and interventions are conceptualised and the kind of sexual and reproductive health concerns that are prioritized.