My postdoc project, entitled ‘The Right to Choose: Increasing migrant girls’ access to sexual and reproductive health and rights in Colombia,’ examines inequalities in decision-making power for Venezuelan adolescent migrant girls and young women (aged 15-19 and 20-24) in Colombia regarding contraceptive care.

The 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development formalised sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR), including “the right to decide” as a human right. Yet, 23 million girls in the Global South still lack access to contraception (UNFPA 2022), leading to unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. Moreover, a number of young women and adolescent migrant girls are pressured or persuaded into using methods they would not have necessarily chosen for themselves. Theories of Reproductive Justice (RJ) highlight how intersecting inequalities shape individual reproductive choices, affording certain groups less decision-making power based on their social location (Ross, 2018).

My research examines how local and global systems of public health and humanitarian aid consider and include adolescent migrant girls in their responses, arguing that those that do will deliver care and protection better suited to individuals’ heterogeneous priorities and preferences.