Adolescents’ awareness of SRHR issues key to a healthy adult life

The paper “Unheard Narratives of Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) of Adolescent Girls of the Holy Cross College, Dhaka, Bangladesh” by Arunima Kishore Das and Sajal Roy was published in Journal Of Humanities And Social Science  (Vol 21, Issue 2, Ver. II) on February 2016. Through a qualitative research approach, this paper mainly covers the adolescent girls’ perspective about sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and how they practice these in their lives.

Adolescents have the right to enjoy reproductive self-determination, bodily integrity, adequate information to protect themselves from Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including HIV, too early or unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion, protection from violence-specially sexual harassment etc. However, as we live in conservative society, it is prohibited to talk about these concerns. From this paper we can see that safe and trustworthy sources of information on sexual and reproductive health and rights are not available to adolescent girls due to social stigma, discrimination, fear, ignorance, religious superstitions and cultural rigidity. All these issues interplay to gain limited understanding on sexual and reproductive health and rights. This results in adolescent girls having incomplete and wrong perceptions of sexual and reproductive health issues in the context of Bangladesh.

Reference:

Das, A. K., & Roy, S. Unheard Narratives of Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) of Adolescent Girls of the Holy Cross College, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

http://researchdirect.westernsydney.edu.au/islandora/object/uws:35374