Adolescent Health and Rights – Center for Reproductive Rights

Out-of-school girls often lack access to essential sexual and reproductive health care and information. SHE SOARS goal is to help these girls understand and claim their sexual and reproductive health rights by:

• Improving access to high-quality, evidence-based sexual and reproductive health information and services.

• Addressing  the root causes of gender-based inequalities.

• Empowering adolescents to make decisions about their own bodies.

In a win for children’s health, safety, and rights, the Philippines has passed a new law to prevent child marriage.The old law set the legal marriage age at 18, but child marriage still happened in some cultures and religions in the Philippines. The Center for Reproductive Rights helped the development of the new law, which makes child marriage a public offense and includes penalties like fines and up to 12 years in prison for violators

On January 20, 2025, the United Nations Human Rights Committee issued rulings in three of the four cases: Norma v. Ecuador, Lucía v. Nicaragua, and Susana v. Nicaragua. The Committee’s rulings are far-reaching, setting new human rights standards to ensure access to sexual education, safe abortion services, and other protections for sexual abuse survivors. Such measures will help to prevent girls from being forced into pregnancy and motherhood.