
How do we learn in advocacy and why is that important?
Safe abortion advocacy in a contentious world
- Authors
- Irene de Vries, Lincie Kusters
- Publication year
- 2025
Advocacy is a crucial activity in advancing human rights and system
transformation. In the past decades, development agents have therefore
increasingly invested in advocacy projects.
The process of advocacy is complex. Especially advocacy for issues that are sensitive and subject to stigma, like safe abortion. Despite substantial evidence on the importance of access to safe abortion, it remains a topic that is strongly influenced by political and cultural discourses. The current political contentiousness around SRHR asks for advocacy more than ever, in order to guarantee women’s health and human rights. It asks as well to further reflect on how we learn within advocacy cycles, in order to strengthen its effectiveness. In this brief we demonstrate how complex advocacy processes can be monitored and learned from.