On the final day of the 2^nd Refresher Institute future advocacy plans were discussed and shared by our youth advocates. On the last day we were also joined by Advocate Anubha Rastogi and Dr. Amar Jesani who gave very interesting and thought provoking insights into issues relating to Human Rights instruments and Ethical issues involved for pro-choice advocates.

We began the day with reflecting on our previous day’s learnings https://asap-asia.org/blog/day-two-2nd-youth-refresher-institute-for-safe-abortion-advocacy/ and were soon joined by Advocate Anubha Rastogi who is a human rights lawyer practicing in various courts for the past 10 years. Through her presentation ‘Using Human Rights instruments for safe abortion advocacy’ she helped participants understand the role of key international laws and covenants to enhance advocacy around access to abortion in the international forums and equip the participants with a general idea of the provisions in international human rights law regarding increasing access to abortion.

In the following session we were joined by Dr. Amar Jesani who is an independent consultant, researcher and teacher in bioethics and public health. He is also one of the founders of the Forum for Medical Ethics Society and its journal Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (IJME www.ijme.in ) and is presently its editor. Dr. Jesani’s session ‘Abortion: Conscientious Objection & Sex Selection’ provided participants with an in- depth understanding on issues relating to abortion ethics and law. While giving a historical overview of the debates he explained at length the various standpoints- liberal, conservative and moderates around the issue. He highlighted the need to step outside of binaries and to constantly question the ethics of all frameworks adopted by both the pro-choice and pro-life movement.

After lunch Dr. Suchitra Dalvie took a session on ‘Building social movements’ where in the participants could understand the theory of change and the mobilization of advocacy efforts towards social movements. She explained in detail the critical areas in building an effective advocacy strategy and the existing challenges.  In the last session the participants were divided into groups to think about their future action plans and share them.

The three day workshop ended with promises to keep in touch and work together as allies in promoting access to safe abortion in the region. But it doesn’t end here- We are very excited to meet our new batch of youth champions who will be joining us on Monday 08 Dec, for a 4 day workshop. Keep reading for more interesting updates to follow.