News

Wednesday 10 April, Rutgers is organising an intimate dialogue between minister Kaag and young people from different countries. Focus will be on young people’s ability to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights linked with their opportunities for economic and social development. What issues do they face, how are they addressing these, and how can collaboration with the Dutch Ministry and other stakeholders help in securing better sexual and reproductive rights and access to social and economic development for young people.

The Rutgers team visited a school and met local stakeholders in Denpasar, Bali. At the school, the team observed a Setara session in action and met students and teachers. They also joined a meeting of the Denpasar Local Advisory Committee, hosted by Denpasar City Council. Explore4Action Local Advisory Committees (LACs) have been established in all three sites (Denpasar, Lampung and Semarang) to bring together local key stakeholders in order to increase buy in and take up of the research findings. Below you find an impression of both visits.

On International Day of Happiness, Rutgers is pleased to share a new animated video, created through the Prevention+ programme, which promotes gender-equal societies without violence, as well as happier and healthier relationships.

The world is going through a critical period of increasing conservatism. There is a tendency to turn away from universal human rights, towards more dogmatic beliefs. The impact of this shift has disproportionate consequences for women, with limitations to their rights, the reinforcement of the male hierarchy and the marginalisation of sexual and gender diversity. Our international programme Prevention+ works with religious leaders to end gender-based violence (GBV).

Saturday 2 March is SheDecides Day 2019. That day, organisations, individuals and politicians from all over the world will ask attention for women’s freedom of choice to decide for themselves whether, when, and with whom they want children. This remains an urgent topic, as 214 million women around the world still don't have access to the contraceptives they want. A concept that to many Dutch women is quite inconceivable. That is why SheDecides Day signals the start of a public campaign, in which Rutgers calls attention to the position of women in countries where availability of contraception and safe abortion care is not self-evident. An online campaign - centred around stories from women in other countries - is launched, in which Dutch women are invited to reflect on their freedom of choice.

This week, Rutgers took important steps in Ethiopia to realise ‘the dream’ as part of their She Makes Her Safe Choice Programme, committing to drastically reduce the number of unsafe abortions and funded by the Dutch National Postcode Lottery’s Dream Fund. As part of this ambitious dream, Rutgers has taken an innovative and courageous approach in the design and implementation of the programme.

National coordinators (NC) from the Right Here Right Now strategic partnership have successfully completed a three-day course on leadership in Utrecht. Meaningful youth participation and youth leadership are core principles of the SRHR advocacy partnership, and with their new skills the national coordinators are now able to lead and manage their national platforms more effectively.

The article hightlights the programme and the growing awareness and importance of adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) in Indonesia.

After more than 20 years, Rutgers has closed its country office in Pakistan. The closure follows orders from the Pakistani government to wind down all operations, which was announced to Rutgers and several other international NGOs early this year. Rutgers is very disheartened by the sudden closing of the office in Pakistan, and thanks all the staff who contributed tirelessly to its work in the past decades.

During the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) in Kigali, Rwanda, today, Rutgers launches its toolkit on gender transformative approaches (GTA). A first edition was handed to Renet van der Waals of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs by Ton Coenen, Executive Director of Rutgers. The new GTA toolkit will help professionals implement Rutgers’ evidence-based way of working in existing programmes to improve the sexual health and rights of all, and end gender-based violence.