“We were born curious young women, and blossomed to decision-making women, give us our answers from our jump start!”, asserted one African young woman living with HIV during the skill building session titled Our Bodies, Our Rights: Young Women’s Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) held on Monday 19th July 2010.

This participatory morning workshop had once again provided platform for young women worldwide to voice out their SRHR needs, and helps make the issues they confront visible at this international event.

The World YWCA-whom have been part of the Conference Coordinating Committee (CCC), a meeting convener has aimed to feed the brainstormed key messages from this brainstorming workshop into the conference outcome documents which will be distributed the following day, and take it further to the 2011 Young Women Creating a Safer World Conference.

Around half of the 31.3 million adults living with HIV and AIDS worldwide are women, and 98 percent of these women live in developing countries according to UNAIDS. It is obviously known that AIDS pandemic has uniquely impacted on women, which stems from their societal role and their biological vulnerability to HIV infection.

Key priority areas encountering by different groups of women e.g. migrant women, women with disabilities, and lesbian women were raised and discussed. Additionally, matter of women’s choices, microbicides as female-initiated prevention option for women including SRHR friendly service and sexuality education for young women were looked into during small group activity.

With regard to violence against women (VAW), the plenary report showed that young lesbian women daily live in violent relationship just like that of their migrant women peers who typically sexually abused. Hence, the young lesbian women has made a strong call for action to advocate on an existence of domestic violence in female-to-female relationship, and stressed out an urgent need of accessible services and support related to VAW and SRHR.

The group discussion focusing on young women choices highlighted a call for an honour of the choices young women make, and an allocation of resources to make their choices healthy and informed. One young African woman living with HIV inserted, “What I really mean when I call for your support is I DON’T ask for your permission, but I want you to respect my choice, and make the environment enabling for my choice.”  The young women participants also brought their attention to issue around sexual orientation and identity, and rights to family.
Moreover, the plenary report on women with disabilities revealed that they face the same challenges as women without disabilities. However, women with disabilities cannot decisions on their own behalf to have sex, to marry, to have children and so forth. It was suggested that for women with disabilities to exercise their SRHR rights, economic and educational opportunities must be made accessible for them.

Young women provocatively called for making the so-called “safe spaces” for them. It was stressed that the mentioned safe spaces through policies and laws need to be initiated by young women for young women. Male involvement was considered very crucial through the eyes of young women in making the spaces safe.

Importantly, an urgent call for action on an early accessibility to comprehensive and unbiased sexuality education, and related SRHR services for young women was echoed across diverse groups of young women.