On June 5-6, 2024, Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters (SRHM) Global and the SRHM Francophone Africa Hub, in collaboration with Together for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and the National Center for Reproductive Health, Mohammed V. University, Morocco, held a two-day meeting on Using evidence to act on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in today’s world in Rabat, Morocco.
The content
In today’s context, the field of SRHR has achieved significant successes and experienced serious setbacks. Laws, policies and programs around the world are increasingly influenced by ideologically inspired policies, rhetoric and misinformation and disinformation.which can lead to human rights violations and adverse health effects.
This has created an urgent need for new approaches to existing strategies, such as influencing public opinion and political action, as well as how evidence is generated and alliances can be built. The diversity of the SRHR movement is one of our key strengths, and this was an important time to review strategies to help identify where to put our collective efforts and resources, including those of SRHM, moving forward.
For thirty years, SRHM has worked to advance the creation and dissemination of rights- and evidence-based knowledge, facilitating the translation of knowledge into action and actively contributing to building alliances and coalitions at global, regional and local scales. Today, as the field faces challenges that threaten to reverse progress in securing SRHR, SRHM and its partners stand even stronger in their commitment to strengthen the role of evidence, build alliances and drive evidence into action – battle against misinformation and retrogression of certain rights related to SRH.
For these reasons, SRHM and its partners gathered representatives international SRHR organisations, SRHR researchers, human rights lawyers and activists, SRHR academics and media and communication experts to identify gaps and priorities; where we need to build evidence. areas where existing evidence can be better framed and used and innovative strategies and alliances developed to address these gaps.
The meeting
The meeting brought together discussions already taking place around these topics, while focusing uniquely on the role of evidence in the SRHR movement to further strengthen the alliance of a multi-stakeholder SRHR community, to strengthen the strategic use of evidence in the SRHR movement, and to develop action plans based on discussion.
Day 1 was centered around discussion opportunities and challenges in using evidence in today’s SRHR context (global, regional and national spaces), using evidence for action with concerns what worked and what didn’t. Discussions also included how to use evidence for action through applied examples. Participants engaged in discussions about strengths and gaps in the current evidence base, how evidence has been used successfully and unsuccessfully to advance this issue, and what lessons can be learned from these experiences to inform future action .
On day 2, participants debriefed analyzing key strategies to promote SRHR, based on the findings from the group work of Day 1. They also explored key strategies for promoting SRHR in groups. Topics for these focus group discussions included recommendations for influencing public opinion, influencing political action, building alliances and building evidence. In this way, SRHR actors from different backgrounds were able to identify strategies for better use of evidence to help advance SRHR and provide recommendations for strategic use of evidence for SRHR action and reflect on how to leverage SRHM as a platform for evidence for action;.
Actions from the meeting
The meeting concluded with important action plans to put the role of evidence on the SRHR agenda in a difficult political climate. Key action plans were formulated in several areas:
First, in reviewing the production of evidence, decolonization efforts were emphasized to ensure that research reflects diverse perspectives and avoids perpetuating historical biases. There was a commitment to strengthen research that directly informs actionable outcomes, in particular by empowering marginalized communities to meaningfully participate in the evidence generation process.
About equality in knowledge creation, the group discussed how to make evidence and knowledge creation more equitable through publication. It included financial considerations for those authors who do not have the financial means to afford author publication fees, diversifying article types to include community practice articles, and expanding the dissemination of local SRHR knowledge. Adapting the language framework to resonate with local and regional priorities and preferences, as well as global contexts, was also highlighted by creating articles in different languages and translating them into English so that knowledge becomes more readily available for local and global communities and ensure wider accessibility and relevance.
Strategic use of data was another central area of focus. This involved generating evidence that directly supports action to influence policy and considers, responds to and strategises about rights-based movements and moves through reliable evidence and rights-based knowledge collection, analysis, transfer and dissemination. Strengthening interdisciplinary collaborations between stakeholders such as researchers, practitioners, policy makers, activists, funders and the media was deemed necessary.
From his point of view strategic communication, efforts were outlined to leverage communication strategies to reach both local and global communities and diverse SRHR communities and beyond, and to potentially influence policy decisions both locally and globally. This included using different media formats tailored to specific audiences and communities, simplifying complex research findings for public consumption, making articles and knowledge available in more diverse formats, working with media and online platforms.
Overall, the meeting highlighted the importance of strategic and comprehensive approaches to generating, disseminating and communicating evidence within the SRHR field. Specific actions were identified with immediate and mid-term timelines.
This initiative was an important element in SRHM’s mission of ‘knowledge for action’ and we will continue to communicate about the actions and outcomes of this important gathering.
