4th Africa Sexual Health & Rights Conference

The 4th Africa Conference for Sexual Health and Rights was hosted by IPPF held 9th-12h February at the UN Conference, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. There were about 700 participants in total and drew a wide range of organizations - youth, SRHR, organizations of sexual minorities, people living with disabilities, women's human rights organizations, etc from across Africa. The Conference had 11 Plenary Sessions and 30 Concurrent Sessions. Over 50 Papers were presented at the concurrent sessions. Other events included book launches, including the launching of two IPPF publications - the Sexual Rights Declaration and the 'Healthy, Hot and Happy' guide to the skills building sessions. A 'Call to Action' was agreed upon at the end of the Conference. This summarizes the key issues discussed, and what partners would commit to implementing and monitoring, leading up to the 5th Africa Conference on Sexual Health and Rights scheduled for Cairo, Egypt.

The conference was preceded by a 2 day Youth Sexuality Institute where 27 young people frm across Africa, and drawn mostly from the Youth Action Movement (YAM) participated to engage on issues of sexuality and HIV/AIDS, the theme of the Conference, and more importantly, to draw up a plan of action on how more young people will get engaged in YAM at the national levels. The Youth Sexuality Institute also came up with a Youth Agenda which was presented on the last day of the Conference.