young people

The experience of youth, especially in developing countries, is described in these papers with eloquence. Adolescents and young people are engaged in expressing the social and sexual mores of those around them, even as many seek to throw off oppressive gender and sexual roles. The diversity of experience of adolescents is such that the only thing they may have in common is belonging to the same age group. The adolescents in these papers may be married or single, in school or out. Some are economic migrants, some are apprentices; some have had children, others have had abortions. Some are not yet having sex, some have experienced sexual abuse and coercion. Some enjoy their sexual lives; others have been forced by poverty to sell sex. The consequences of belonging to a higher or lower socio-economic class, living in a rural vs. urban area, in a developing rather than a developed country, are significant. The lives of the least advantaged, such as street children, AIDS orphans and young refugees have little in common with the privileged lives of middle-class adolescents. Yet most young people have less information about sexual and reproductive health matters and fewer rights than they need and greater uncertainty and embarrassment.

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