What we do
Sexual and reproductive health and rights
We all want to be healthy, and everyone has the right to health. The right to health is an essential component of our human rights and is recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights treaties. As part of our universal right to health, we all possess sexual and reproductive health and rights or SRHR.
It’s important for everyone’s health and well-being that they can claim their SRHR. Claiming our SRHR means we have access to the services, products, and information necessary to lead a healthy life. It means that we can make informed choices concerning our health, bodies, and futures and that we can make these decisions without stigma or discrimination.
Not only is SRHR essential to our health and well-being, but ensuring SRHR for all also has a wider, positive impact on our family, community, and society. That’s because being able to claim SRHR is central to economic empowerment, and it’s crucial to achieving gender equality and the Sustainable Development Goals too.
Everyone benefits from ensuring SRHR for all.
But not everyone can fully claim their SRHR.
Many factors impact on our ability to claim our SRHR. Social norms make it difficult to talk openly about SRHR or access SRHR services. The affordability and accessibility of SRHR information, products, and services can also make it hard to claim these rights. Additionally, there are intersecting factors such as race, gender, class, and location that impact our ability to claim our SRHR.
Middle East and North Africa
Ensuring SRHR for all is a global challenge. Masarouna works in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) because of the diverse obstacles young people face there in claiming their SRHR.
Young people in MENA are often excluded from power and grow up in a world largely shaped by others. As a result, they face challenges in claiming their SRHR. But young people in MENA have demonstrated their ability to create change in their societies. That is why meaningful youth engagement and youth-led approaches are essential to Masarouna.
Social norms are the unwritten rules in society that guide how we behave. Social norms can be positive or harmful, and they are different depending on the context. When it comes to SRHR, social norms can impact how we make decisions about our bodies, health, and future.
Each country that Masarouna works in has its own unique context that impacts social norms around SRHR. But generally, social norms around SRHR in MENA have been informed and reinforced through periods of colonization, conflict and instability, rising militarism, religious and political extremism, income inequality, gender inequality, and high youth population and unemployment. These challenges systematically deny young people of their SRHR, which makes them vulnerable to health risks, discrimination, and violence.
Despite these challenges, young people in MENA are change-makers that participate in and lead movements that challenge dominant norms, powers, and structures. And young people are developing creative solutions too. This wave of youth-led activism creates new possibilities for young people to raise their voices loudly and shape their own future.
Read our baseline study
Review our baseline study which highlights the most significant findings of the capacity strengthening survey, civic space tool, desk review, online youth surveys, digital and context analysis for each of the key change areas as formulated in the Theory of Change.