Power Beyond the Margins: Lessons from the 8th RHNK Pan-African AYSRHR Conference in Mombasa
By Lolyne Ongeri
The 8th Pan-African Adolescent and Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (AYSRHR) Scientific Conference, hosted by Reproductive Health Network Kenya (RHNK) in partnership with the Ministry of Health, was a policy event and a bold reminder young people are not waiting to be included; they are already leading the charge for inclusive, rights-based, and responsive SRHR systems across Africa.
Held in Mombasa in June 2025, the conference brought together government officials, grassroots movements, civil society organisations, healthcare providers, and young activists from all corners of Africa and beyond, interested in the pursuit of SRHR across the region to share experiences in advancing access to comprehensive SRH information and services. The conference also provided a platform for stakeholders to network and engage with donor organizations.
One of the key highlights of the conference was the side panel discussion, Power Beyond the Margins: Advancing Inclusive SRHR for Africa’s Youth. This session created space to center the lived experiences, leadership, and policy priorities of young people with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC). Within this group, many face intersecting forms of marginalization, such as racism, economic inequality, and ableism, that further complicate their access to rights and services.
Here are some of the core lessons from that conversation:
1. Language Can Liberate or Limit
Language plays a powerful role in shaping public opinion and policy, and anti-rights movements know this well. By using loaded terms like “family values,” “gender ideology,” or “protecting children,” these movements frame their agendas in seemingly neutral or moral terms while actively undermining the rights of women, queer people, and marginalized communities. This strategic misuse of language erases lived experiences and recasts struggles for bodily autonomy and dignity as threats to tradition or order. The result is a harmful narrative that fuels stigma, criminalization, and policy rollback, often with real-life consequences for those already pushed to the margins.
In contrast, centering lived experiences offers a critical counter-narrative. When intersex, trans, queer, and other marginalized individuals speak from their realities, they reveal the deep personal impact of laws, stigma, and erasure. Reclaiming language and using terms like bodily autonomy, gender justice, and affirming care, grounds advocacy in truth and challenges the sanitized, dehumanizing rhetoric of anti-rights actors.
Language can either reinforce exclusion or serve as a tool for dignity and inclusion. Framing matters using affirming, accurate, and inclusive language helps dismantle stigma and opens up room for policy that truly reflects lived realities, and reclaiming power in spaces where people have long been spoken about, rather than spoken with.
2. SRHR Without Mental Health Is Incomplete
Mental health and SRHR are deeply interconnected, yet often treated in isolation. The ability to make informed choices about one’s body, relationships, and identity is not only a matter of physical health, but profoundly affects emotional and psychological well-being. When individuals face stigma, coercion, or barriers to SRHR services, it can lead to anxiety, depression, trauma, and isolation. This is especially true for marginalized groups, such as ITGNC and queer youth, survivors of gender-based violence, people engaging in transactional sex, and people living with HIV, who often experience layered forms of discrimination that impact both their mental health and access to care.
An inclusive SRHR approach must go beyond clinics and contraception to consider the emotional safety, dignity, and lived realities of those it aims to serve. Trauma-informed care, counseling, community support, and the integration of mental health services into SRHR programs are essential. Without addressing the psychological impacts of exclusion, violence, or fear, SRHR efforts risk overlooking a fundamental part of what it means to be healthy, autonomous, and whole.
3. Criminalization and Stigma Are Structural Barriers
Criminalization and stigma remain some of the most entrenched barriers to achieving inclusive sexual and reproductive health and rights. Across many African countries, including Kenya, laws and social norms continue to criminalize the identities and survival strategies of marginalized groups, including those seeking safe abortion or gender-affirming care. These legal frameworks are not only limiting access, but also legitimizing violence, reinforcing systemic discrimination, and normalizing the exclusion of entire communities.
However, legal progress is possible. As Lady Justice Njoki Ndung’u emphasized during the Conference, Article 43 of Kenya’s Constitution guarantees the right to health, including reproductive healthcare and emergency medical treatment. In a landmark moment, the 2022 PAK vs. AG ruling affirmed that abortion is a constitutional right in Kenya, protecting both patients and providers from arrest when accessing or delivering this care. This decision was a critical step in pushing back against criminalization and restoring the rights of those often targeted by restrictive laws. Still, stigma within institutions, communities, and even health systems continues to prevent people from claiming these rights in practice. Ending criminalization and dismantling stigma must go hand in hand if SRHR is to be truly accessible and just.
4. Inclusion Must Be Intentional
Inclusion must be built deliberately into every stage of policy, programming, and decision-making. We have seen that more often than not, inclusivity has been an item on a checklist: a seat on a panel, a brief mention in a report, or a funding proposal. Real inclusion requires meaningful participation, where communities most affected by sexual and reproductive health issues, including intersex, trans, sex-working, disabled, and displaced youth, are actively shaping the agenda.
Meaningful participation and inclusivity involve funding grassroots-led work, creating safer spaces for marginalized voices, translating materials into accessible formats and languages, and inviting communities to lead on policy, research, and monitoring. It also names the barriers to inclusion, like stigma, tokenism, elitism, and lack of resources, and actively addressing them. Inclusivity must guide how institutions engage, fund, and share decision-making power. Without this intentionality, we risk reinforcing the very exclusions we claim to fight against.
6. Funding for us, by us
At the heart of many SRHR movements across Africa is a call for funding models that are led, shaped, and controlled by the communities they serve. "For us, by us" challenges the traditional donor-recipient dynamic where external actors set the agenda, define success, and determine who gets resourced. “For us, by us” also invites us to look inward. We often speak of funding as something that must come from outside, yet we already hold many of the resources we need in our networks, in our skills, in our knowledge, and yes, even in our collective financial capacity. Whether it's sharing tools, co-building infrastructure, mentoring each other, or pooling funds, we must stop working in silos and begin organizing collectively.
Final Reflections
For SRHR to mean anything, inclusion must be intentional, mental health must be central, language must affirm, and funding must shift toward models that trust and empower communities themselves. The conference also reminded us that the systems we need already exist in fragments: in peer-led healing spaces, in survivor networks, in intersex and trans-led organizing, in the quiet resilience of youth building care and advocacy with what little resources they have access to.
This event was organized by the Reproductive Health Network of Kenya, and sponsored by the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Hewlett Foundation, Africa CDC, Center for Reproductive Health Rights and UNFPA.
