SHARE:
Sophia Sushi, the Executive Director and one of the Founders of Teens Corridor, an organization promoting adolescent sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and a member of the Coalition of Women Human Rights Defenders (CWHRD) has a new perspective on advocacy for SRHR. Sushi is from the remote Mwanza region, about 1000km from Dar es Salaam in the northern part of Tanzania. She says, “I now understand that there are challenges of service availability, accessibility, affordability, acceptability and quality. A large part of the government budget on SRHR comes from development partners, we need to create even larger movements from the grassroots level to advocate for SRHR issues including budget allocation and legal transformation.”
Sushi is one of the Women Human Rights Defenders in Tanzania who have been engaged in the “Building vibrant repro rights movement in Tanzania” project, implemented by Coalition for Women Human Rights Defenders with support from Gender links, who is funded by Amplify Change. The project is aimed at reducing discrimination, stigma and legal barriers for safe abortion and post abortion services in Tanzania. It is carried out to save women and girls’ lives through its contribution to reinvigorating the SRHR movement by building a joint sense of ownership over a common agenda that is inclusive and mutually understood, enhancing cross-generational feminist solidarity and knowledge transfer around selected SRHR issues in order to keep movements strong, active and alive.
One of the most recent events that Sushi participated in was training on public interest litigation. She learnt a lot from the training particularly on using public interest litigation as an advocacy tool in addressing challenges of SRHR facing women and girls in Tanzania. “I have been following public interest litigation cases, but I did not understand the whole process, such as the stages to follow in developing cases, and how to file cases in court” she said. “I have also been transformed in terms of existing myths and perception around SRHR as most WHRDs did not perform well in this area due to the perceptions we had on SRHR”.
She said through participation in various activities, she now has positive attitudes towards advocacy on SRHR as a fundamental human rights issue.
She promised to use the knowledge and skills to enhance advocacy on SRHR in her organisation as well as to transform her staff who have negative myths and perceptions about SRHR issues particularly sensitive issues such as safe abortion.
Sushi believes, “It is essential for Women Human Rights Defenders to start movements on SRHR at the grassroots level to advocate for legal transformation.”