No. 8: Assessing Adolescent Reproductive Health Policies and Programs Anne-Emmanuele Calves (July 2002)  Full Document (English)      Order for free      email to me  At the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, more than 180 countries, including 38 sub–Saharan African countries, drafted and ratified the Programme of Action that includes support for the provision of sexual and reproductive health education, information, and services to adolescents. Addressing adolescent reproductive health (ARH) issues is particularly crucial in sub–Saharan Africa, where rates of maternal mortality, unsafe abortion, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), among youth are the highest in the world. Despite the obvious importance of the topic, ARH remains a controversial subject in the sub–Saharan region. Consequently, the exercise of caution in approaching the subject has led to a gap between the declarations of governmental officials and the actual design of reproductive health policies and programs geared toward youth. This paper provides a practical means of assessing reproductive health policies and programs geared toward adolescents. First, it presents major elements of ARH policy and program development and sets benchmarks against which future policy and program development can be measured. Second, the paper compares ARH policy and program development in three Francophone African countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and Togo.