The Ministry of Health has been urged to strengthen the training of healthcare providers on youth-friendly service delivery to ensure that adolescent girls and young women (AGYW), including those still in school, are able to access sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) services without fear, stigma or discrimination.
The call was made by Eswatini National Youth Council (ENYC) representative Sikhulile Hlatshwako while engaging as a panellist during a discussion at the ECSA-HC Regional Youth Summit 2026, held at Happy Valley in Ezulwini yesterday.
The summit brought together young people from East, Central and Southern Africa to deliberate on how youth can be better prioritised within sexual and reproductive health initiatives. It marked the final leg of the 76th ECSA-HC Health Ministers Conference, with Friday and yesterday dedicated to youth-focused engagements ahead of the main ministerial meeting scheduled for February 3 to 5, under the theme ‘Enhancing health systems for equity, resilience and sustainability’.
The platform enabled youth voices to directly engage regional health stakeholders and articulate priorities around SRHR, policy inclusion and economic empowerment. Delegates reiterated that strengthening health systems for equity, resilience and sustainability required the meaningful participation of young people at all levels of decision-making.
Hlatshwako said access to SRHR services remained uneven for young people, particularly school-going AGYW who often faced barriers when seeking care at public health facilities. She said the Ministry of Health needed to integrate youth-friendly SRHR services across the healthcare system to improve accessibility and reduce preventable morbidity and mortality among young people.
She acknowledged the ministry’s ongoing training of healthcare providers and commended the efforts made so far, particularly in promoting youth-friendly approaches.
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However, she stressed that continued and expanded training was necessary, noting that many AGYW in school still needed to access SRHR services at health centres where confidentiality, sensitivity and non-judgemental care were not always guaranteed.
She said health facilities should be safe and welcoming spaces for young people, warning that fear of judgement often discouraged adolescents from seeking essential SRHR services, with long-term consequences for their health and wellbeing.
On policy matters, Hlatshwako said the ENYC had a responsibility to ensure the availability and effective implementation of a comprehensive national youth policy that incorporated sexual and reproductive health and rights as a key component. She stressed that policies should move beyond paper commitments and translate into meaningful action on the ground.
She emphasised that the meaningful involvement of young people in policy design and monitoring remained a critical gap. Referring to a recent review of an HIV risk-reduction module, she said many young people and even implementers were unfamiliar with the document, highlighting a disconnect between policy development and those expected to operationalise it.
Hlatshwako said young people could not be expected to engage with or apply policies they had not been involved in developing, adding that the review process felt more like the beginning of policy formulation than an evaluation of an existing tool.
She further called on the ENYC to strengthen youth-led advocacy on SRHR through comprehensive life-skills education for both in-school and out-of-school youth, supported by targeted mindset-change programmes.
She argued that while income-generating initiatives were important, they often failed to achieve their intended impact without addressing underlying attitudes and social norms. She said empowering the girl child required deliberate efforts to promote informed decision-making and personal agency beyond economic support alone.
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On youth economic empowerment, Hlatshwako urged greater inclusion of young people as beneficiaries of entrepreneurship programmes, including technical and vocational education and training (TVET), micro-agriculture initiatives and paid internships.
She acknowledged progress made through partnerships that provided professional mentorship and paid placements, but stressed that unpaid internships continued to exclude many young people who could not afford transport, professional attire or basic living costs.
She said gaps remained in TVET and micro-enterprise support, calling for the diversification of youth programmes beyond agriculture to include sectors such as beauty and service-based enterprises.
