Advocacy, faith, and SRHR: civil society strategies across the globe
As part of our reflection on the past ten years of AmplifyChange’s work, we are proud to highlight key advocacy strategies furthering sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) advocacy in challenging contexts. In this report, we invite you to learn how civil society organisations are practically implementing faith-based approaches to SRHR advocacy. Through using religion and engaging faith leaders to achieve positive change, organisations across Africa and South Asia have made concrete, sustainable change within their communities.
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Introduction
Religion is present to some extent in nearly every country of the world. Research from Pew Research Center shows that 84% of the world’s population is affiliated with a religion, with numbers projected to grow. While some countries are facing a decrease in the number of people who identify as religious, other areas of the world – particularly countries in Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East – have maintained high percentages of their populations who say religion plays an important part in their life.
As a result, religion inevitably intertwines with politics and social norms. While people may hold the same religious beliefs or belong to the same religious affiliation, how individuals interpret religious teachings and apply it to their lives differs greatly. Some may hold more conservative views relating to their religious beliefs, while others use more liberal interpretations of their religion to inform their lives. Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) is one area where this is evident.
At a political level, religion is increasingly used as a justification for restricting the SRHR of people across the world, particularly women, young people, and sexual and gender minorities.
- In Uganda, the Anti-Homosexuality Act passed in 2023 was funded and coordinated by Christian fundamentalist movements based in the US. Much of the argument for the passing of this law was based on the notion of protecting so-called ‘traditional values’, a loose term generally used by SRHR opposition groups to promote harmful, heteronormative beliefs about gender roles and sexuality.
- In 2016, the Safe Abortion Bill in Sierra Leone was blocked due to pushback from religious leaders in the country. They argued that the bill ran counter to the constitution’s commitment to the ‘right to life’, despite the fact that 10% of maternal deaths in the country were attributed to unsafe abortion.
- Similar pushback from religious leaders on Somaliland’s landmark Rape and Sexual Offences Act 2018 resulted in a revised version of the law in 2020 that weakens protections for rape and sexual assault survivors and permits early, child and forced marriage.
- Increasingly, the intersection of ethno-nationalism and religious fundamentalism is manifesting itself in restrictive policies and practices affecting rights around fertility, marriage, and sexual orientation and gender identity, as seen for example in some countries in South Asia.
However, some religious organisations and leaders are taking steps to ensure that SRHR remains protected. These organisations use religious teachings and language to argue for the preservation and promotion of SRHR. Some of this same language is co-opted by anti-SRHR religious groups to argue against support for SRHR. Pro-SRHR religious groups are a critical partner to further SRHR gains, especially in challenging contexts.
Secular civil society organisations acknowledge the importance of bringing religious leaders on side in order to further their advocacy goals. Religious leaders have various levels of influence, whether over the beliefs of their congregations which can affect social norm change, or directly to decision makers which can affect policy and law change. In some places, people are more likely to trust their religious leaders on issues over politicians. Research shows that working with religious actors is a key strategy to improve population health and outcomes. So, when seeking partners for advocacy on SRHR, engaging religious leaders is key.
Who we are
AmplifyChange is a multi-donor challenge fund that supports civil society advocacy for SRHR in Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. Our vision is to secure full attainment of sexual and reproductive health and rights for all. We believe this can only be achieved through building a stronger civil society, with diverse organisations who are resilient and work together to form movements for change.
Our grant-making is demand-led. We seek proposals from organisations who directly tell us what advocacy strategies and approaches work best to further SRHR in their contexts. Since 20141, we have proudly supported 319 projects that explicitly include religious leaders as a key stakeholder, including direct funding to 16 organisations2 who self-identify as faith-based. Projects have been implemented in 48 countries, with a total of GBP 28,607,825 3 invested in faith-based approaches to SRHR advocacy.
Location of Faith-based SRHR Projects
1 Data includes grants approved up to January 2025.
2 At application stage, organisations can optionally select how they would like their organisation to be classified (eg, faith-based, women-led, youth-led, etc). This number may underrepresent the true number of faith-based organisations funded by AmplifyChange.
3 Amounts indicate the overall grant budget.
4 Grants can work on one or more SRHR priority theme(s), so some projects will be counted multiple times.
We have identified five key strategies that organisations are using to achieve their work:
- Including religious leaders in movements for SRHR
- Training religious leaders as champions for social norms change in their communities
- Engaging religious leaders as spokespeople to other stakeholders, including their peers
- Using research about religious texts and beliefs to further SRHR arguments
- Working with faith-based facilities and structures to integrate comprehensive SRHR
Each section of this report will focus on the above advocacy strategies and explain how AmplifyChange grantee partners have used these approaches to further their advocacy goals. In addition, case studies from each of our five priority areas will be shared, giving an in-depth examination of religious engagement in SRHR advocacy.
Including religious leaders in movements for SRHR
Movement building is an essential part of social and political change. By building stronger alliances with a diverse range of partners, the promotion and preservation of SRHR can be more sustainable. Movements make more impact as a collective than when individuals or organisations work alone or in competition.
One way to strengthen the resilience of SRHR movements in contexts where religion plays a key role in daily life is engaging religious leaders and organisations.
Multi-faith and multi-sector movements have been key to furthering SRHR policy and law change. The We Will Speak Out South Africa (WWSOSA) Coalition is a faith-based movement to end sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). The coalition supported a group of GBV support groups in different local townships, called Phephisa Survivors Network, and built their capacity to form themselves into a formally-registered support and advocacy network. WWSOSA created advocacy spaces for survivors to advocate to faith leaders for improved policies and mechanisms to address SGBV. Bringing together a wide range of religious leaders in 2019, they successfully developed a declaration stating that ‘GBV is a Sin’, with over 150 signatures. This groundwork influenced the formation of a national collective of faith leaders, activists and scholars called the Faith Action Collective to End GBV in June 2020, currently hosting over 970 subscribers through regular monthly online forums. In 2023, the 2019 Faith Leaders Statement in KwaZulu Natal grew into a National Interfaith Statement of Commitment to address GBV, signed by almost 700 people of diverse faiths. WWSOSA advocated for improved laws around ending SGBV in South Africa as part of a broader civil society lobby for a National Strategic Plan (NSP) on GBV. In the first draft of the NSP for KwaZulu Natal, faith leaders had been excluded as stakeholders in ending SGBV. However, after lobbying and advocacy from WWSOSA, the final document explicitly identified faith leaders as a key partner in addressing SGBV in policy. The State President launched the NSP on GBV and Femicide in April 2020. Further collaborations have guided the development of the first Interfaith GBV Strategy for the South African faith sector (2024-2030), in line with the NSP, to be launched in October 2024.
Secular organisations and networks additionally look to build linkages and partnerships with religious leaders and organisations to reinforce their reach and change social norms. SRHR Africa Trust (SAT) in Zimbabwe engaged with religious leaders through their social norm change work addressing myths and misconceptions about abortion and the Termination of Pregnancy Act (ToP) in Zimbabwe. These conversations ensured that there were platforms for transforming attitudes around ToP. As well as religious leaders, SAT engaged with the Chief’s Council and made significant strides in shifting their thinking around abortion. Engaging these structures provided a framework for broader norm transformation at a community level and enhanced community referral systems for legal support and health care where it was appropriate.
Including faith leaders and organisations in movements for change ensures stronger advocacy and a more united voice on SRHR.
Centre for Solutions Journalism
Malawi, a country where nearly 95% of the population belongs to a religious community, has faced significant challenges in reforming its abortion laws. The existing legal framework, inherited from colonial times, is restrictive and poses a substantial barrier to reproductive rights and empowerment. The advocacy journey to law reform has faced substantial resistance from religious communities, as many leaders advocated against abortion law reform based on their beliefs. Given the significant role of religion in Malawian culture, engaging religious leaders as allies was crucial. The voice of these leaders could effectively counteract religious-based opposition to abortion. Recognising the need to address this issue, the Centre for Solutions Journalism (CSJ) in Malawi initiated two projects to engage religious leaders in the campaign for abortion law reform.
The projects, centred around the Termination of Pregnancy (T.O.P) Bill, aimed to transform the stance of religious leaders on safe abortion. These efforts resulted in the formation and registration of the Religious Network for Choice (RNC), a multi-faith coalition advocating for safe abortion. The RNC provide a unified voice advocating for safe abortion from a religious perspective.
[We] decided that we cannot just be, on one side, human rights activists, and on the other side, you have opponents as religious leaders. Sometimes, once […] an anti-choice religious leader says something, it's better that a fellow religious leader who is pro-choice should respond to those issues.
Mobilising individual religious leaders was initially difficult, as many struggled to persuade their respective organisations to support the cause. However, CSJ successfully engaged individual religious leaders from various faiths across Malawi. They were trained on the implications and importance of the T.O.P Bill. Since the project began, more than 60 traditional and religious leaders trained and supported by the CSJ have become active advocates for safe abortion.
As a media organisation, CSJ produce and broadcast educational SRHR television programmes as well as debates. Additionally, they publish a weekly newspaper column in a national newspaper to raise public awareness and support for the bill. As part of their media strategy, religious leaders frequently feature and collaborate on media pieces about abortion law reform, increasing their reach on the wider community as well as their peers. The initiatives led to a more supportive media environment and increased public awareness about the need for safe abortion.
Religious leaders, now part of the RNC, acted as spokespeople to engage their peers and the general public, fostering a supportive environment for the law reform. By creating a community of like-minded religious leaders, they had a supportive platform to push back against backlash from their peers. RNC have signed and sent a petition to parliament calling for the enactment of the T.O.P Bill.
CSJ's projects have significantly contributed to creating a supportive environment for abortion law reform in Malawi. By engaging religious leaders and leveraging their influence, CSJ has paved the way for a more compassionate and supportive approach to reproductive rights in the country. Moving forward, CSJ hope to obtain resources to enable the RNC to continue its advocacy through press releases, conferences, and other outreach activities.
For someone to actually unlearn the beliefs that they have and start changing their minds, it also has to take some religious leaders to say, ‘Look here – God is love. God cannot wish someone to die because of unplanned pregnancy. If God is love, then let us love those people who have an unplanned pregnancy and wish to terminate it.’ So the voice of religious leaders will make a lot more sense than anyone else.
The formation of the RNC stands as a testament to the potential of faith-based advocacy in challenging and changing deeply rooted cultural and legal barriers.
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Training religious leaders as champions for social norms change in their communities
Where individuals get their information about SRHR varies greatly. In many places, SRHR is not systematically or comprehensively included in school curricula. Shame and stigma around SRHR often acts as a barrier to seeking services or information at healthcare facilities. Myths and misinformation about SRHR topics circulate freely, especially with the increased influence of technology.
Religious social norms are one of the many barriers to SRHR advocacy and services. As trusted leaders in their communities, religious leaders – those who have influence over their communities and congregations – play an important role in sharing positive and accurate messaging about SRHR. By engaging with religious leaders and including them as champions for social norm change in their communities, this barrier can begin to break down.
The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) in Tanzania focused on strengthening the SRHR knowledge of young people and increase access to services. The project provided training to 45 parents and religious leaders on effective advocacy for improved SRHR services and education through Adolescent-Friendly Health Centres. Religious leaders arranged sessions with champions for their youth members and contributed to advocacy. Their active involvement helped build trust, cultural sensitivity, and relevance in delivering SRHR messages within the community.
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In many communities, religious leaders are gatekeepers of certain harmful practices, some wrongly perceived to be religious, including FGM/C and child marriage. They are highly influential in their communities in terms of people’s decision making around the topic. So, Kenya Council of Imams and Ulamaa engaged the Muslim community in Kajiado, Narok and Naivasha counties to sustainably advocate to promote SRHR. The project successfully trained 30 religious leaders (Imams and Maalimats) to empower them with the relevant knowledge and information to campaign for FGM/C abandonment and promotion of SRHR. The trained religious leaders signed on to become ambassadors, educating their communities and peers about the harms of FGM/C and gender-based violence (GBV). In addition, ambassadors were trained to offer psychosocial support for survivors of GBV, linking them with services as needed. Click here to watch a video from the project.
Transforming social norms requires a good understanding of the social, cultural, and religious barriers facing SRHR promotion in communities. By engaging with religious leaders as champions, positive change is more accessible.
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Deaf Women Included
Persons with disabilities face significant stigma about their sexuality, creating barriers to access services. Conversations about disability and SRHR topics, including contraception and abortion, are taboo. Additionally, some religious doctrines conflict with SRHR principles, and patriarchal interpretations of religious texts often hinders reproductive autonomy and rights. Deaf Women Included (DWI), a women-led disability rights organisation in Zimbabwe, undertook a pioneering project to improve access to services, resources, and knowledge on gender-based violence (GBV) and SRHR for deaf women and girls. DWI advocated for policies that promote disability inclusion, primarily targeting service providers through evidence generation and training on disability inclusion. However, community engagement strategies, including work with religious leaders to foster a supportive SRHR environment, played a crucial role in their work as well.
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The early involvement of faith leaders ensured project acceptance and sustainability and that the project aligned with local values and beliefs. DWI educated deaf women and girls on their rights and available services and held dialogues with community leaders, including school principals and faith-based leaders, to advocate for SRHR education. The team created and distributed posters featuring community leaders as allies in the fight against GBV and child marriage. Religious leaders engaged in the project helped spread key messages that reduced stigma and encouraged individuals to seek essential SRHR services. These leaders contributed to many successes to improve understanding of SRHR and positively shift attitudes among community members.
Strengthened partnerships between SRHR advocates and faith-based leaders led to more effective and sustainable interventions. Women and girls were empowered to make informed choices about their health, and faith leaders became vocal advocates for SRHR. There was increased reporting of GBV cases and greater acceptance among service providers towards women and girls with disabilities. Faith-based organisations also began referring for or providing SRHR services.
The DWI project in Zimbabwe demonstrates the critical importance of community engagement, evidence-based training, and multi-level behaviour change strategies in enhancing SRHR and GBV resources for deaf women and girls. By fostering strong partnerships between religious and public health organisations, and leveraging the influence of faith-based leaders, the project made significant strides towards creating a more inclusive and supportive SRHR environment for deaf women and girls.
Engaging religious leaders as spokespeople to other stakeholders, including their peers
As well as their communities, religious leaders are also key to influencing their peers – other religious leaders and institutions – which is crucial for sustainability to SRHR advocacy. Civil society organisations, including those that are faith-based, have implemented initiatives to support peer-to-peer engagement. By creating a community of religious leaders who are able to support each other while acting as change makers to improve SRHR, there is more sustainability in their advocacy efforts.
Kenya Muslim Youth Development Organisation (KMYDO) launched a comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) project called Amina Ali, which integrated CSE into Muslim education institutions. While initial pushback from religious leaders proved a challenge to the project, KYMDO used their partnerships with Muslim scholars, who supported the development of Amina Ali’s curriculum, to advocate to senior religious leaders. These leaders then engaged more willingly with the project once they understood that KYMDO actively consulted Muslim scholars and other religious partners.
Addressing the issue of menstrual health, the Rwanda Interfaith Council on Health (RICH) focused on challenging stigma and discriminatory practices surrounding SRHR and menstrual health in the workplace and community, including engaging men and boys in the conversation. As religious leaders themselves, they were able to successfully engage with their peers to transform negative beliefs and norms about SRHR. They worked with leaders to develop materials that could be used by anyone of any faith to educate their communities about SRHR topics. Additionally, through their advocacy work conducted alongside other partners, RICH contributed to influencing the government to remove the tax on menstrual pads in 2019. This result is a great step towards reducing period poverty. It has allowed for more efforts to focus on access to both products and education, as well mainstreaming conversations around menstruation.
When religious leaders are supported to become spokespeople to other religious leaders or influential decisionmakers, advocacy goals to promote SRHR can be better influenced.
Muslim Family Counselling Services
Child marriage is high in the Bawku area of Ghana, with many marriages arranged for financial reasons. As a saying in the region goes, “you give me land, I give you a child.” Muslim Family Counselling Services (MFCS), with 34 years of experience in implementing SRHR projects in Ghana, played a Child marriage is high in the Bawku area of Ghana, with many marriages arranged for financial reasons. As a saying in the region goes, “you give me land, I give you a child.” Muslim Family Counselling Services (MFCS), with 34 years of experience in implementing SRHR projects in Ghana, played a pivotal role in addressing child marriages and SGBV. With the practice of child marriage closely linked to religious beliefs, their project in the Bawku West District sought to empower faith and traditional leaders, along with smaller community organisations, as advocates for improving adolescent SRHR.
MFCS recognised that faith leaders are key members of communities, providing guidance and support as moral authority figures. They are key to changing social norms around practices affecting young people in the district. Through the project, faith leaders engaged with scripture to identify religious arguments to support advocating for adolescent SRHR and ending SGBV. By consulting religious texts, they formulated arguments to support health education outreach to schools and train faith leaders within places of worship. By approaching community outreach holistically, MFCS communicates consistent and culturally appropriate messaging to be disseminated by their community partners.
In the project, they successfully trained 215 faith and traditional leaders as advocates for positive change, engaged survivors of SGBV, and mobilised men and boys to support adolescent SRHR initiatives. MFCS noticed a decrease in child marriages and increase in girls’ enrolment in schools by the end of the project. Additionally, at the community level, there were improved relationships between Christian and Muslim leaders regarding marriage officiation, with leaders asking for the age and consent of girls before marriages.
There is an ongoing need to expand efforts into neighbouring communities and to sustain the early successes identified in this project. However, MFCS’s project in Bawku, Ghana, demonstrates the powerful role of faith and traditional leaders in transforming communities. By combining scriptural advocacy with community engagement, the project addresses deep-rooted cultural norms and promotes the health and rights of adolescents. The project's successes highlight the potential for lasting change.
“For us, not even belonging to any faith is your faith. So when we say ‘faith-based approach’, we mean inclusivity. So if you are not a Muslim, you are not a Christian, you are not traditionalist, you are not Buddhist, you are not Hindu, you are not all the religions you can count – that is your faith. So at least we have some faith that we can [engage with].”
Using research about religious texts and beliefs to further SRHR arguments
Civil society groups, in particular faith-based groups, understand that many of the anti-SRHR advocacy messages coming from religiously-motivated opposition groups use religious texts to justify their arguments against SRHR. To counter this, organisations have used religious texts as the basis for their own advocacy work to promote SRHR.
Réseau des jeunes ambassadeurs pour la santé reproductive et la planification familiale (RJASR/PF) in Niger identified the importance of engaging with young religious leaders and encouraging their support on comprehensive sexuality education (CSE), known as ESRAJ (Education à la Santé Reproductive des Adolescents et Jeunes). Through their project, they created a network of eight young religious leader organisations who created Christian and Muslim arguments in favour of representative health education for adolescents and young people. They succeeded in mobilising these young religious leaders' organisations in favour of ESRAJ by signing a commitment form. By signing this document, these religious youth organisations committed themselves to integrating all issues related to reproductive health education for adolescents and young people into their activities. Additionally, they brought these religious groups into their advocacy and strategy meetings with government ministries, further building the influence of young religious leaders on positive policy and law change.
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Often messaging that is created to engage with other religious leaders to improve social norms and beliefs about SRHR can be applicable to a wider audience. Faith to Action Network, as part of the Because We Can! Project led by IPPF Africa Region, coordinated a group of faith-based organisations across Southern Africa to develop united arguments to further SRHR advocacy. These included developed briefs addressing GBV, SRHR, and teenage pregnancy from a multi-faith perspective using texts from Christian, Muslim, Bah’ai, and African traditional religious texts. These messages and guidance supported their advocacy to religious leaders within their contexts to improve access to information and services
By engaging with religious texts, organisations can counter anti-SRHR and anti-gender rights religious arguments by using the same tools and language, thereby strengthening the support for SRHR from a religious perspective.
Universal Coalition of Affirming Africans (UCAA)
In Uganda, a country where 98% of the population identifies as religious, faith institutions play a crucial role in shaping societal norms and values. Religion holds significant sway over both culture and policy and religious leaders command significant respect within their communities.
The enactment of the Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA) in 2023 created a climate of fear and uncertainty for the LGBTIQ community in Uganda. Despite these challenges, some religious leaders have come forward to challenge the AHA in the Supreme Court, advocating for the coexistence of religious faith and LGBTIQ identities. Within this framework, Universal Coalition of Affirming Africans (UCAA), a coalition of faith-based institutions and people of faith, is striving to advance the rights of all individuals, with a specific focus on LGBTIQ people.
Understanding religious leaders' perspectives is crucial for informing the coalition’s work and the project has bolstered a movement of inclusive faith leaders who provide support and advocacy for the LGBTIQ community. Establishing trust and mutual understanding is essential, especially when leaders are concerned about their reputations. The coalition now includes 110 members comprising faith leaders, people of faith, and faith-based institutions actively engaged in advocacy since 2017.
Previous studies have highlighted the role of religion and culture in the discrimination against LGBTIQ people in Uganda. As part of their project, UCAA are conducting evidence-based advocacy to drive change. UCAA bring people together to discuss and reinterpret faith texts, particularly the Bible, to promote a more inclusive understanding of religion. As well as interpreting the texts to support advocacy, the project supported 50 LGBTIQ individuals in reconciling their sexuality with their faith, improving their mental health and fostering a sense of peace and acceptance.
Despite these successes, the coalition faces significant challenges. Pro-AHA legislators often push back against LGBTIQ advocacy, leading to increased risks for advocates and the broader community, necessitating heightened security measures. This has led to a reduction in general advocacy efforts as many human rights defenders and organizations are hesitant to include LGBTIQ rights in their agendas. There is limited financial support for faith-based initiatives, as some donors are reluctant to back religiously framed advocacy.
The coalition aims to create a robust movement of faith leaders and institutions, in partnership with other civil society organizations (CSOs), to advocate for human rights inclusively. UCAA hope that by leveraging the trust Ugandans place in religious leaders over political figures and continuing to use faith-based strategies, the coalition successfully influence societal attitudes and policies, ensuring that the human rights of LGBTIQ individuals are recognized and respected.
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Working with faith-based facilities and structures to integrate comprehensive SRHR
To improve access to SRHR services, it’s crucial to engage healthcare providers from facilities. In many countries, large portions of healthcare facilities are run by faith-based organisations, which can often provide a barrier to comprehensive service delivery. In Africa, 50% of the share of some countries’ hospital beds are provided by faith-based health facilities. ‘Conscientious objection’, where a healthcare provider or pharmacist can deny providing medication or a service based on their personal beliefs, is an increasing trend across many parts of the world. With regard to services like abortion care, studies have shown that conscientious objection has a negative affect on the ability of individuals to receive services. Similarly, faith-based schools and educational institutions often have exemptions from teaching certain topics, like Life skills-based education or CSE. This means that many learners are not accessing information on SRHR.
To respond to these barriers to SRHR services and information, organisations have partnered with faith-based structures to ensure that comprehensive information and services can be delivered to improve SRHR access.
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Inclusive and Affirming Ministries (IAM) in South Africa are working with faith leaders, educators, and other stakeholders like parents, psycho-social specialists, and academics to ensure that life skills curriculum is more inclusive of LGBTIQ issues and that LGBTIQ learners feel safe in the classroom. To date, the project has worked with teachers and brought them together to discuss opportunities and challenges on supporting inclusive, comprehensive and holistic life skills education. These meetings and the outcomes that resulted will inform advocacy efforts to multi-sectoral education stakeholders through knowledge creation and knowledge-sharing platforms.
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DASTAK Women Rights and Awareness Foundation is a women- and survivor-led organisation that follows a holistic, participatory, and human rights-based approach to address gender-based violence and advance sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of youth in Pakistan. DASTAK’s ongoing project Marham directly works towards the implementation and inclusion of evidence-informed comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) within religious seminaries in Urdu language. Religious seminaries serve young people aged 13-18 years old in religious education, either as a supplement to mainstream schooling or as the primary source of schooling. The engagement of religious seminaries around CSE is needed but has been challenging to implement in Pakistan. A key aspect of the project is building the evidence base of CSE needs of both teachers and students working within a religious context. By identifying how to present and share CSE information that is not only factually correct and comprehensive, but appropriate to the context of the seminaries, there is a higher chance of success. The project so far has made great progress establishing partnerships with seminaries, and the flexible nature of their AmplifyChange grant has allowed DASTAK to react to barriers as they arise. By the end of the project, DASTAK aim to develop a Marham website, with accompanying app and chatbot, in partnership with teachers, students, and religious scholars, to ensure that information is efficiently disseminated to students at religious seminaries. The project hopes to create a more sustainable and inclusive CSE movement for youth through engaging religious seminaries teachers and administrators as role models, enabling a learning environment for youth to openly talk about and be more aware of their SRHR. You can read more about DASTAK’s work and approaches in this article.
Solidarité des femmes pour le développement intégral (SOFEDI) in South Kivu, DRC work in coalition to promote DRC’s comprehensive safe abortion rights law and increase access to abortion and post-abortion care within the legal framework. Using a holistic approach, they worked with religious organisations alongside service providers, police, community leaders and communities to build a strong referral network for survivors of sexual violence. SOFEDI provided clinical training and values clarification exercises for healthcare providers in public and faith-based facilities; educating local courts and police departments to the importance of safe abortion and post-abortion care based on the legal framework; and ensuring that survivors of sexual violence and their communities are informed of the right to access rape treatment and respectful post-abortion care. As a result of their work, SOFEDI report that health facilities, particularly faith-based ones, provide more compassionate and less discriminatory care for survivors.
By integrating faith-based facilities as targets for advocacy on improved SRHR, organisations can ensure that comprehensive services and education is available for all.
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Haguruka
A growing number of schools across Africa are managed by religious groups. Rwanda is one country that has seen the growing influence of religion on educational institutions. Understanding that students who attend religiously-affiliated schools should have the same access to SRHR information as others, civil society groups have taken a larger role in disseminating age-appropriate and medically accurate SRHR information in religious institutions.
Haguruka is a civil society organisation based in Rwanda working to improve the rights of women, young people and children, including through better sexual and reproductive health and rights. As part of their project, they worked with faith-based schools to improve the availability and accessibility of age-appropriate, high quality comprehensive sexuality education (CSE).
A key barrier to CSE in schools is negative social norms around adolescent sexual health, despite high rates of youth gender-based violence and unintended pregnancies. Haguruka successfully navigated these challenges by working closely with faith leaders, schoolteachers, and parents to simplify the existing CSE curriculum and to integrate a new module using a pleasure-based approach to reduce negative discourse around sexual health. Pleasure-based lessons centred on healthy communication, consent, and decision-making, including about safer sex. Six teachers were trained as pleasure champions, and by the end of the project they helped engage 120 other teachers on the topic.
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By integrating pleasure into their work, teachers reported feeling more equipped to directly address concerns regarding SRHR amongst their students. Faith leaders recognised the importance of CSE in schools, particularly as a protective mechanism against sexual harassment and exploitation for students. Students were more engaged in the topic and felt more able to speak openly about the challenges they face in managing their wellbeing and health, especially within sexual or romantic relationships. The topics of bodily autonomy and consent provided young people with the confidence to address gender-based violence at school and amongst their peers.
Based on end-of-project student interviews, a majority of young people in the project felt better equipped to make informed decisions about their sexual health as a result of the improved curriculum. By including faith-based institutions in their advocacy for better CSE, Haguruka successfully identified key strategies to improve adolescent understanding on SRHR.
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Looking Forward
AmplifyChange is proud to be a partner for civil society organisations since 2014. We believe in a world where everyone can access their SRHR. We believe that a strong, diverse and collaborative civil society can form movements to bring about change.
Working with faith leaders and using faith-based approaches to furthering SRHR is one of many strategies that our grantee partners use to make positive change in their communities. As our grantee partners have shown, there are a range of strategies that successfully integrate a faith-based approach to SRHR advocacy:
- Including religious leaders in movements for SRHR
- Training religious leaders as champions for social norms change in their communities
- Engaging religious leaders as spokespeople to other stakeholders, including their peers
- Using research about religious texts and beliefs to further SRHR arguments
- Working with faith-based facilities and structures to integrate comprehensive SRHR
Beyond our grant-making to civil society, AmplifyChange also partners with faith-based organisations who advocate for improved SRHR at the global level. AmplifyChange co-organised sessions at the International Conference on Family Planning in 2022, focusing on advocating for youth access to SRHR, and Women Deliver in 2023, focused on partnering with faith actors for improved SRHR. Additionally, we engage faith-based organisations in our ‘Talking about life skills, more comprehensively’ dialogue and Global Safe Abortion Dialogue convening, focused respectively on connecting the wider comprehensive sexuality education and life skills education movement and strengthening the global movement for abortion rights.
By identifying the most effective way to engage with faith allies and religious resources, civil society have further tools to support their advocacy to make positive change regarding SRHR in their contexts. AmplifyChange look forward to continuing to support projects that seek to do this.
Thank you to all our grantee partners who shared their stories, images, and videos for this report.
- We Will Speak Out South Africa (WWSOSA) Coalition
- SRHR Africa Trust (SAT) Zimbabwe
- Centre for Solutions Journalism
- Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) – Tanzania
- Kenya Council of Imams and Ulamaa
- Deaf Women Included
- Kenya Muslim Youth Development Organisation (KMYDO)
- Rwanda Interfaith Council on Health (RICH)
- Muslim Family Counselling Services
- Réseau des jeunes ambassadeurs pour la santé reproductive et la planification familiale (RJASR/PF) – Niger
- Faith to Action Network
- Universal Coalition of Affirming Africans (UCAA)
- Inclusive and Affirming Ministries (IAM)
- DASTAK Women Rights and Awareness Foundation
- Solidarité des femmes pour le développement intégral (SOFEDI)
- Haguruka
