Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters

Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters (SRHM) promotes sexual and reproductive health and rights globally. www.srhm.org

On World Refugee Day, we highlight how survival strategies take shape under conditions of forced displacement.Transactio...
23/06/2026

On World Refugee Day, we highlight how survival strategies take shape under conditions of forced displacement.

Transactional s*x is often framed through moralised or simplified narratives. A recent blog and SRHM Podcast episode challenge this, showing how it is shaped by restrictive asylum systems, housing insecurity, limited livelihoods, and shrinking access to services.

🌍 Drawing on a multi-country study conducted across Jordan, Lebanon, Türkiye, Greece and Switzerland, the report by the Liminality Research Consortium offers critical evidence on how transactional s*x is embedded in the structural conditions of displacement.

In conversation with Dr Shirin Heidari and Prof Monica Onyango, the episode explores why moving beyond binary notions of “choice” and “force” matters, and how people navigate deeply constrained environments.

👉 The health consequences are significant, including heightened vulnerability to HIV, unintended pregnancy, unsafe abortion, and ongoing mental health stress. Yet humanitarian responses remain fragmented and disconnected.

Addressing these issues requires clarity, coordination, and approaches grounded in rights and evidence.

🎧 Listen and read: Survival strategies and health repercussions in forced displacement: Transactional s*x in focus: https://www.srhm.org/news/survival-strategies-and-health-repercussions-in-forced-displacement-transactional-s*x-in-focus/

📄 Read the report:https://liminality.ch/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025_Survival-Strategies-and-Health-Repercussions-in-Forced-Displacement_Liminality-Research-Consortium.pdf

New episode of the SRHM Podcast 🎧Eszter Kismődi speaks with Neil Datta (EPF) to unpack the evolving landscape of anti-ge...
22/06/2026

New episode of the SRHM Podcast 🎧

Eszter Kismődi speaks with Neil Datta (EPF) to unpack the evolving landscape of anti-gender and anti-rights movements.

🌍 Drawing on new analysis from the European Parliamentary Forum, the episode reveals a highly coordinated, well-funded and increasingly sophisticated ecosystem shaping policy, knowledge and even service delivery. From “gender ideology” narratives to faith-based science and transnational advocacy, these actors are influencing not only SRHR, but wider democratic systems.

Understanding these strategies is key to building effective, evidence-based responses.

Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube, or at srhm.org.

“They’re not used to people asking what they need.”💙 In contexts where abortion is criminalised, feminist accompaniers a...
17/06/2026

“They’re not used to people asking what they need.”

💙 In contexts where abortion is criminalised, feminist accompaniers are quietly transforming care.

🌎 In this qualitative study from Brazil, Nathália Machado Cardoso, Naomi Braine and Ana Flávia Pires Lucas D’Oliveira explore how abortion accompaniment is practised as a deeply relational, ethical, and political form of care.

Accompaniers centre each person as a subject with knowledge, needs and agency, rather than a passive patient, combining technical expertise with lived, collective experience.

✊ Their work challenges fragmented, medicalised models by offering continuous, tailored support before, during and after abortion. Rooted in solidarity and justice, accompaniment aims not just for safe outcomes, but for abortion to be a dignified, even positive, experience.

👉 But this care comes at a cost: legal risk, emotional strain, and invisibility threaten its sustainability.

This study calls for health systems to learn from accompaniment — and for policies that recognise and support more humane, people-centred models of abortion care.

Read the paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26410397.2026.2660555

👉 Expanding choice in s*xual and reproductive health means centring what people actually want and need.📖 This new system...
15/06/2026

👉 Expanding choice in s*xual and reproductive health means centring what people actually want and need.

📖 This new systematic scoping review by Stephen Bell, Susannah Gibbs, Claire W. Rothschild, Heather Ingold, Lemessa Oljira, Irene Akhigbe, Dinesh Kumar, Marion Subah, Leora Nicole Pillay, Kanwal Qayyum, Eden Demise, Sarah Onyango, Abigail Winskell and Kristen Little explores how users across 20 countries experience on-demand SRH self-care products.

🌏 Findings show strong acceptability driven by convenience, fewer side effects, and better alignment with people’s s*x lives and daily realities. On-demand options support greater agency, more people-centred care, and even help bring pleasure back into SRH.

💙 As access expands, these products have the potential to shift power towards users, enabling safer, more flexible, and more satisfying s*xual and reproductive health experiences across the life course.

Read the full paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26410397.2026.2660555

📣 Exploring Somali-born women’s experiences with contraceptive services in Sweden through a reproductive justice lensNew...
12/06/2026

📣 Exploring Somali-born women’s experiences with contraceptive services in Sweden through a reproductive justice lens

New research by Anna Wängborg, Marie Klingberg-Allvin, Sahra Saidarab, Cristina A. Mattison, Elin C. Larsson and Helena Kilander highlights how Somali-born women navigate contraceptive care in Sweden.

👉 Drawing on focus group discussions with 60 women, the study reveals how reproductive choices are shaped by community, household and partner dynamics, alongside women’s own experiences with health services.

🌍 The findings point to the urgent need for person-centred contraceptive care that listens to women’s voices, avoids stereotypes and addresses intersecting power dynamics within health systems.

Advancing reproductive justice means designing services that reflect people’s lived realities.

Read the research article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26410397.2026.2667110

As health leaders, policymakers, civil society organisations and communities gathered in Mombasa for the 9th RHNK Pan-Af...
12/06/2026

As health leaders, policymakers, civil society organisations and communities gathered in Mombasa for the 9th RHNK Pan-African AYSRHR Scientific Conference, one question cuts through everything else: who is financing the thriving agency and futures of Africa’s girls?

The World Health Summit in Nairobi set the agenda for African health sovereignty: integration of care, domestic financing, and systems built to outlast donor cycles. Now we must ask whether that agenda reaches the girls who need it most.

In this episode of the SRHM Podcast, Eszter Kismődi is joined by Serah Malaba, Co-CEO of Tiko, to explore how smarter, more equitable health financing can transform the lives of adolescent girls across Sub-Saharan Africa, and why this is fundamentally a question of economic justice.

"We have the data. We have the models. We have the roadmap. What we are waiting for is the political will to treat girls not as a problem to contain, but as the investment that determines whether Africa’s future is the one we say we want."

Read the blog and watch or listen to the podcast: https://www.srhm.org/news/unlocking-the-girl-dividend-why-smarter-health-financing-is-africas-best-economic-bet/

How are our emotions being shaped, monetised, and mediated by technology?In light of the recent cancellation of RightsCo...
05/06/2026

How are our emotions being shaped, monetised, and mediated by technology?

In light of the recent cancellation of RightsCon 2026, S*xual and Reproductive Health Matters (SRHM), in collaboration with the Queensland University of Technology, is supporting Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani, CONICET, the NOMADIC project and partners to host Emotional Capitalism and Artificial Intimacy - ensuring these important conversations continue.

This session explores how digital platforms and AI are transforming intimacy, relationships, and emotional life, raising critical questions about power, care, and connection in increasingly technologised societies.

🎙️Speakers:

👉 Dr Zahra Stardust (Moderator): Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA Fellow; Co-Chair, World Association for S*xual Health S*xual Rights Committee, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the QUT (Queensland University of Technology)

👉 Micaela Mantegna: Known as the ‘Abogamer’, Micaela is a video game lawyer and activist, renowned for her expertise in digital ethics, extended reality (XR) policy, and the complex intersections of artificial intelligence, creativity, and copyright law.

👉 Dianela Gahn: Dianela is a sociologist and interaction designer working across urban research, gender, sociotechnical systems, and with a growing interest in AI governance. She is a CONICET Research Fellow and doctoral candidate at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), affiliated with IHUCSO Litoral and IIGG. She is also a researcher in the NOMADIC project (Horizon Europe).

📅 Join the conversation on Monday 22 June 2026
🎟️ Register: https://events.humanitix.com/emotional-capitalism-and-artificial-intimacy

🎙️ New episode of the SRHM PodcastBeyond the Ruling: Kenya’s Abortion Appeal, Post-Abortion Care and the Fight for Repro...
05/06/2026

🎙️ New episode of the SRHM Podcast

Beyond the Ruling: Kenya’s Abortion Appeal, Post-Abortion Care and the Fight for Reproductive Justice

🌍 A recent Court of Appeal decision in Kenya has raised urgent concerns for healthcare providers, advocates and human rights movements. What does it mean for access to care, legal protections and reproductive justice?

In this episode, Eszter Kismödi (S*xual and Reproductive Health Matters) is joined by:
▪️ Martin Onyango (Center for Reproductive Rights)
▪️ Ruth Mumbi (Women Collective Kenya)
▪️ Nelly Munyasia (Reproductive Health Network Kenya)

Together, they unpack the ruling and its wider implications, exploring:
▪️ The legal significance of the decision
▪️ Abortion vs post-abortion care under Kenyan law
▪️ The impact of criminalisation on healthcare
▪️ Disproportionate effects on marginalised communities
▪️ Misinformation, stigma and anti-rights narratives
▪️ Strategies as the case heads towards a Supreme Court appeal

👉Listen or watch now and join the conversation on rights, justice and access to care: https://www.srhm.org/news/beyond-the-ruling-kenyas-abortion-appeal-post-abortion-care-and-the-fight-for-reproductive-justice/

In light of the recent cancellation of RightsCon 2026, SRHM, in collaboration QUT (Queensland University of Technology),...
03/06/2026

In light of the recent cancellation of RightsCon 2026, SRHM, in collaboration QUT (Queensland University of Technology), is supporting Repro Uncensored, ESWA and other organisations to host a number of sessions that were scheduled to take place, to ensure these important conversations continue.

🌍 Join us on 15 June for S*x in the Shadows of Big Tech, a timely discussion on how social media platforms suppress s*xual health education, harm reduction and rights-based content, while allowing misinformation, hate speech and digital surveillance to proliferate.

✊ This webinar will explore how censorship, shadowbanning and deplatforming affect s*xual health educators, s*x workers, LGBTQ+ communities and other marginalised groups, and what can be done to safeguard s*xual and reproductive rights online.

Moderator:
• Dr Zahra Stardust - Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA Fellow; Co-Chair, World Association for S*xual Health S*xual Rights Committee, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the QUT (Queensland University of Technology)

Speakers:
• Kali Sudhra – Executive Director, European S*x Workers’ Rights Alliance (ESWA)
• Mar Diez Henao – Cybersecurity & Privacy Legal Counsel; Co-founder, Espacio Seguro LGBTQIA+ Burgos
• Maria Prendeville – Content Marketing Writer specialising in women's health, femtech and digital censorship
• Martha Dimitratou – Founder and Executive Director, Repro Uncensored

👉 The discussion will examine the intersections of platform governance, surveillance, s*xual rights, and digital justice, while highlighting strategies of resistance from those most affected by online censorship.

🔗 Register here: https://events.humanitix.com/s-x-in-the-shadows-of-big-tech

*xualRights

In light of the recent cancellation of RightsCon 2026, SRHM is supporting a number of sessions that were scheduled to ta...
02/06/2026

In light of the recent cancellation of RightsCon 2026, SRHM is supporting a number of sessions that were scheduled to take place, to ensure these important conversations continue.

🌍 Join us on 15 June for S*x in the Shadows of Big Tech, a timely discussion on how social media platforms suppress s*xual health education, harm reduction and rights-based content, while allowing misinformation, hate speech and digital surveillance to proliferate.

✊ This webinar will explore how censorship, shadowbanning and deplatforming affect s*xual health educators, s*x workers, LGBTQ+ communities and other marginalised groups, and what can be done to safeguard s*xual and reproductive rights online.

Moderator:
• Dr Zahra Stardust – Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow; Co-Chair, World Association for S*xual Health S*xual Rights Committee

Speakers:
• Kali Sudhra – Executive Director, European S*x Workers’ Rights Alliance (ESWA)
• Mar Diez – Cybersecurity & Privacy Legal Counsel; Co-founder, Espacio Seguro LGBTQIA+ Burgos
• Maria Prendeville – Content Marketing Writer specialising in women's health, femtech and digital censorship
• Martha Dimitratou – Founder and Executive Director, Repro Uncensored

👉 The discussion will examine the intersections of platform governance, surveillance, s*xual rights, and digital justice, while highlighting strategies of resistance from those most affected by online censorship.

🔗 Register here: https://events.humanitix.com/s-x-in-the-shadows-of-big-tech

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