Faith, religion, sexuality and young people. Find out what young representatives from all over the world, including:
- Bangladesh
- Brazil
- Cameroon
- Chili
- Egypt
- Hong Kong
- Iraq
- Ireland
- India
- Ghana
- Malaysia
- Morocco
- Uzbekistan
thought about these issues. Youth staff and other representatives of the IPPF Secretariat also participated.
The 9th IPPF youth working group meeting addressed the issue of working with religious youth/young people in different religious and faith contexts. This topic was identified as a key challenge for IPPF within the review of Adolescent Programming.
The main focus of the meeting was to discuss how IPPF can support young people to make a positive connection between their religion or faith, and sexual and reproductive health and rights.
It also sought to improve young people’s access to information, education and services in strict religious contexts, and examined how IPPF can better work with religious and faith-based leaders and institutions to enhance young people’s wellbeing and development.
The meeting did not include ideological debates comparing different religions, but instead adopted a positive approach to finding ways of responding to the SRHR needs of both religious and non-religious youth.
Many IPPF Member Associations work with religious leaders/in religious contexts on a daily basis.
These positive experiences need to be better shared, documented and analyzed, to support the development of good practice, the implementation of the Strategic Framework and explore opportunities for scaling up.