International Women’s Day 2026 comes at a time when global politics shaping rights, health and justice are changing rapidly. Polychronic armed conflicts and humanitarian crises continue to devastate communities, now intersecting with major changes in development financing and global power structures that are reshaping how responses are funded and governed. At the same time, environmental and economic injustices put increasing pressures on communities and livelihoods.
These are not separate challenges. Conflict, displacement, extractive economies, climate change and ideological attacks on gender equality intersect in ways that directly shape people’s ability to exercise bodily autonomy and access health, dignity and justice.
On International Women’s Day, Sexual and Reproductive Health Issues (SRHM) draws attention to these interconnected realities and in collective responsibility required to deal with them.
The evidence must support the action.
Armed conflict doesn’t just disrupt sexual and reproductive health care—it dismantles the systems that make it possible. Supply chains collapse, maternal care becomes unaffordable and health workers are displaced, injured or killed. For populations forced to leave, continuity of care disappears precisely when it is most needed. In these circumstances, sexual violence often increases while access to services and accountability mechanisms weakens.
Humanitarian agencies have long recognized this reality. THE Minimum Initial Service Package (MISP) establishes sexual and reproductive health as a life-saving standard from the onset of the crisis, including safe childbirth, contraception, HIV services and clinical rape management. However, the application remains uneven. As humanitarian funding conventions and coordination systems are restructured, securing these commitments—and ensuring accountability to women and girls—is becoming more difficult.
Evidence from the SRHM survey demonstrates these pressures in humanitarian contexts. A recent study on access to contraceptives among displaced Syrians in Turkey shows how displacement disrupts access to basic contraception even when formal services exist. Analysis of women’s health and rights in conflict: the impact of renewed violence in Lebanon highlights how renewed violence, economic crisis and fragile governance structures are undermining the provision of sexual and reproductive health services. And research for sexual and reproductive health and rights in Gaza documents how extreme conflict conditions erase the institutional protections needed to sustain care.
Recent research discussed in an SRHM podcast episode by Liminality Research Consortium further shows how these pressures shape survival strategies. Across Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece and Switzerland, researchers have documented how transactional sex is emerging in contexts of forced displacement, shaped by border regimes, poverty, housing insecurity and shrinking humanitarian funding. The consequences for sexual and reproductive health are profound, including increased vulnerability to HIV, unintended pregnancy, unsafe abortion and mental health stress.
Together, these cases highlight a central reality: commitments to women and girls in humanitarian settings must be translated into consistent implementation on the ground.
Protecting sexual and reproductive health in crisis requires coordinated leadership, flexible funding and the central role of national and local actors who support services even in the most difficult circumstances.
Upcoming Event
Accountability to women and girls: Adherence to sexual and reproductive health standards in humanitarian response
March 10, 2026 | 09:00–10:30 CET | Hybrid
This event will bring together government representatives, humanitarian experts and local organizations to turn Humanitarian Reset commitments into concrete action, looking at how coordination, funding and accountability mechanisms can ensure that the needs and rights of women and girls remain central to humanitarian decision-making.
Economic and environmental injustice directly shapes sexual and reproductive health and rights. Access to land, livelihoods, clean water and safe environments profoundly affects reproductive autonomy and health outcomes.
Extractive industries—including mining, oil, and large-scale agriculture—often displace communities, pollute ecosystems, and intensify economic precariousness, with disproportionate impacts on women.
In a recent episode of the SRHM Podcast, SRHM was joined by Allan Maleche (KELIN), Mercy Kalemela and Audrey Bigeti (Girls to Women Kenya) to explore how extractive industries are reshaping land, power and sexual and reproductive health and rights in Kenya. Focusing on gold mining in Kakamega County, the episode examines land tenure, mercury exposure, gender-based violence and the daily health risks faced by women and girls, while locating these harms in a wider context universal model of exorcism.
Climate change amplifies these pressures. A recent systematic review on the impact of the climate crisis on reproductive justice; documents how climate shocks disrupt maternal health services, limit access to contraception, and deepen structural inequalities that shape sexual and reproductive health outcomes.
Addressing SRHR therefore requires stronger linkages with economic and environmental justice—integrating sexual and reproductive health into climate adaptation strategies, strengthening health systems in environmentally vulnerable settings, and ensuring that affected communities are central to decision-making.
Upcoming Event
Cross-cutting crises and intersectional solutions: Environmental justice and SRHR
March 18, 2026 | 15:00–16:30 SATURDAY | Online
Co-hosted by SRHM and Columbia University’s Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health during CSW70, this webinar will explore structural barriers, accountability gaps, and rights-based pathways linking environmental justice and SRHR.
In many countries, concerted political movements are working to limit access to abortion, repeal gender-affirming health care, roll back comprehensive sexuality education, and redefine legal protections in ways that exclude transgender and non-binary people. These developments shape legislation, funding decisions and public discourse.
Responding to this moment requires strengthening the evidence base, building alliances, and reaffirming SRHR’s integrated vision based on autonomy, equity, and well-being.
SRHM continues to contribute to these conversations through analysis, research and dialogue. Recent debates have looked at how world politics is changing—including her executive actions influence international SRHR funding—reshaping the landscape for organizations and health systems worldwide.
Advancing knowledge remains at the heart of this work. SRHM’s upcoming collections, one on transgender health and one on abortion rights, aim to strengthen the evidence base for inclusive health systems and support advocates and policymakers navigating complex legal and policy environments.
This builds on earlier SRHM scholarship which emphasizes that sexual health must be understood in its full human context. The editorial “Finding the world of intimacy: where pleasurable safe sex dances with release” it reminds us that sexual health is not only about preventing harm but also about dignity, pleasure and liberation. Surveys such as “The Sex Effect: The Prevalence of Sex-Life Reasons for Discontinuing Contraception.”“ further demonstrates how recognition of sexuality and lived experience enhances effective health policies.
The dialogues of SRHM—from the debates onwards the right to science in sexual and reproductive health for discussions about surrogacy and bodily autonomy as an issue of reproductive justice — illustrate how evidence, rights and collective engagement can shape more equitable policy responses.
In this International Women’s Daythe task before us is not only to defend existing gains but to advance a comprehensive vision of sexual and reproductive health and rights that it focuses on autonomy, justice, dignity and well-being.
