Youth Advocates Working to Improve Reproductive Health Education, Services Access in Latin America

In GlobalPost's "Global Pulse" blog, Mia Mazer, a media and communications intern with the International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region, writes about the formation of the Mesoamerican Coalition for Comprehensive Sexuality Education, a regional advocacy initiative of more than 40 different organizations that aims to hold governments accountable to a 2008 Ministerial Declaration, titled "Preventing through Education." As a tool for HIV prevention, the declaration was meant to improve young people's access to reproductive health services and education, she writes, adding, "But four years later, the ministries have failed to uphold their promise."

"Comprehensive sexuality education empowers young people with the tools they need to control their own economic futures and develop secure, sustainable economies," Mazer writes, highlighting efforts by youth advocates to raise awareness of the declaration and spur government action. "The youth advocates' work is about more than just securing legislative victories and gaining access to information and services. It is about fundamentally changing the relationship between government, civil society, and young people in Latin America and the Caribbean," she concludes (12/19).