‘Rape isn’t always something that happens when you are dragged into an alleyway’, says Heleen Heysse, Policy Officer at Sensoa, the Flemish centre of expertise on sexual health. ‘The subtle ways in which coercion can take place, as well as the many ways consent can be freely given, is within this law. It recognises people’s experiences and their trauma’. Heleen says the consent law which came into effect in June 2022 in Belgium is a victory for survivors and campaigners. The legislation unequivocally states: non-consensual sex is rape. Rape cases will now no longer hinge on whether a survivor said ‘no’ or fought back. Instead, it is an offence when consent is lacking, withdrawn or when advantage is taken of a victim’s vulnerable state. The consent-based definition also applies to other forms of sexual violence.   Sensoa has been at the forefront of campaigning for reform of the outdated sexual criminal law for many years. They say that within the new law, the absence of struggle or reaction can no longer be taken as implicit consent as it takes into account the freeze response – when a person is unable to react. Heleen stresses the presumption of innocence until proven guilty remains one of the core tenets of the Belgian justice system and investigations are just as rigorous. This, she says, contradicts the myth spread by opponents of consent-based legislation that women will use the law to falsely report rape; complaints of which are grossly overestimated. Previously, an assault could only be legally considered rape if coercion, physical force or verbal threats took place, or a person was unable to defend themselves. Like in many countries across the EU, rape victims had to prove that there had been violence or that they had explicitly said ‘no.’ Alongside this law, Belgium has also become the first country in Europe to decriminalise sex work, which Heleen and her colleague Julia Day say makes it easier for sex workers to report sexual violence. Training prevents victim blaming Up to 90% of rape cases in Belgium go unreported and only 4% of people file a complaint with the police. Julia and Heleen say this is due to the hurdles survivors face when reporting sexual violence, not to mention the trauma associated with interrogations and pervasive victim blaming. Julia says adequate training is essential: ‘It’s important police know and understand the law so when conducting an interview, they have guidelines on questioning to establish whether the victim consented freely.’ Reporting a rape is a big ordeal. Victims of sexual violence often blame themselves and are afraid they won’t be believed. Even under the new law, in Belgium, when someone reports a rape to the police, the legal process is kickstarted immediately. This can discourage people from reporting sexual crimes. Fortunately, the introduction of Sexual Assault Centres has vastly reduced reporting obstacles; 68% of survivors who came to a centre went on to file a complaint, significantly higher than the national average. This is largely because the support offered at the centres is focused on providing confidential care to survivors and helping them to rebuild their lives; it includes forensic analysis, trauma care, specially trained inspectors, psychologists and case managers in one place. It also enables marginalised groups, such as transgender people and sex workers to report rape in a safer environment. Currently, there are seven centres across Belgium and Julia says they hope to have one in every province: ‘Five years ago, we had nothing. It’s a good step forward. There’s a lot that needs to be in place to open a centre. They must be linked to other hospital services, there needs to be an HIV clinic and counselling as well.’ As regards the reporting process, the centres support survivors in a way that is sensitive to the extreme stress they are experiencing, and the impact it has on the ability to process information and form memories. Victims are filmed telling their stories and can decide later on if they want to press charges or not.   Heleen believes filming is vital to avoid retraumatisation: ‘It minimises how many times questions are asked, which reduces the emotional burden of the process.’ For Julia, it gives rape survivors a sense of control: ‘You get lost in the legal system with no idea what to expect and that’s scary, especially when the control has already been taken from you. When you have to repeat your story, it’s normal that it changes, and this can be used against you. Filming limits victim-blaming and puts them in a more powerful position.’

We spoke to young people from the Western Balkans about how their access to sexual and reproductive health and rights was affected by the COVID pandemic, and asked them about their vision for re-designing a more youth-friendly future in which young people can flourish.  Yellow is a 22-year-old student from Skopje, North Macedonia.   Yellow, describe your experience of access to SRHR* education, information and care before and during COVID.    During the beginning of the pandemic, my access (as a student) to health services was limited due to bureaucratic obstacles to enjoying the right to free health care. Sexual and reproductive health, as well as non-COVID services, were deprioritized, hence access to them was difficult. Since COVID, things are slowly starting to return to normal, but due to the global economic situation, some of the services offered by the NGO sector are being cut and we are working strictly with certain groups of individuals who are being targeted at the moment. I have witnessed young people being turned away from accessing SRHR-related services because they do not belong to a certain group.   Did anything change for the better for you during the pandemic in terms of access to SRHR? Has this continued since COVID is no longer an urgent crisis? What has improved is access to SHRH education, due to the expansion of availability with new digital tools. But many of these alternatives, which were of great importance in the time of COVID, have been cut off by the easing of restrictions.   What was the biggest obstacle to your SRHR during the pandemic? How could decision-makers/medical professionals have removed this obstacle?   The main obstacle during the pandemic was the complete deprioritization of all health care at the expense of COVID. Due to the novelty of dealing with a pandemic, the government and institutions had difficulties in managing things. Additionally, I believe that gender blindness in making these decisions was shown by curtailing the freedom and movement of people who were most in need of SRH services. This could have been prevented by including the perspective of different marginalised groups in the creation of recommendations and protocols to deal with the pandemic.     What lessons do you think governments and professionals working with young people should learn from the COVID experience about how to look after young people’s health and well-being in a crisis?  I don't think any new lessons were learned, unfortunately. I hope that the experience of this pandemic will help in creating programs and protocols that will prevent similar situations like this. In a number of states, states of emergency have been misused to push political agendas. Additionally young people were again placed at the bottom of the list for maintaining their well-being, reinforcing the stereotype that health care should not be a priority for young people because of their 'youth/age'.     What is your number 1 recommendation on what is needed to make services more youth-friendly? What difference would this make in the life of a young person like you or your friends? Very easy: ask and listen to young people. High quality, youth-friendly services should be available and accessible to young people in appropriate locations. Employees need to be motivated and ready to adapt to work with young people. Perhaps an additional piece of advice would be to invest in young people who can be professionally involved in these institutions.   * SRHR = sexual and reproductive health and rights Interview conducted by Anamarija Danevska, a member of the regional youth group of the IPPF EN project Youth Voices, Youth Choices, funded by MSD for Mothers  

We spoke to young people from the Western Balkans about how their access to sexual and reproductive health and rights was affected by the COVID pandemic, and asked them about their vision for re-designing a more youth-friendly future in which young people can flourish.  Erblin Berisha is a 21-year-old from Prishtina, Kosovo. He is studying web development.    Describe your experience of access to SRHR* education, information and care before and during COVID. COVID limited our access to SRHR because of measures like we had to wear masks and could go out for just two hours a day with our ID cards. Information was less accessible because NGOs couldn’t hold their activities. If we were interested, we could Google a topic - I did this. But before the pandemic there were activities that were a good way to let everyone know about sexual health risks. Here in Kosovo it’s kind of difficult for SRHR to be taken seriously because there’s an old mentality of not talking about sexual health. Now, that we are out of the pandemic I suppose information is more accessible – thank god, because it is really important.   Do you think anything changed for the better during COVID? Not, really no. I think a lot of things improved digitally during the pandemic, but not access to SRHR information. It was kind of like a forgotten subject, so the only information people got was how to deal with COVID-19, but they never really talked about sexual health.   What was the biggest obstacle to your SRHR during the pandemic? How could decision-makers/medical professionals have removed this obstacle?   The people who provide information on SRHR are already doing their best by building young people’s awareness and developing activities. I’m not sure if this did happen, but it would have been helpful during the pandemic to hold online meetings on SRHR, to give people knowledge about how to keep themselves safe.   What lessons do you think that governments and professionals like doctors should take from COVID about how to look after young people health? I don`t think they learned any lessons, because after the pandemic everyone acted like COVID was gone and there were no improvements, like people forgot about sexual health actually.   What is your number one recommendation of what is needed to make services youth-friendly? I would say probably make people aware of these issues from an early age. One problem is that teachers don’t want to talk about this stuff because it’s embarrassing; that happened to me at school, when sex was mentioned, the kids all started laughing and didn’t care about the lesson, and the teacher got embarrassed and just told us to read the materials at home, which probably nobody did. It would better to actually talk about this earlier on.   What difference would this make in your life, or your friends' lives? Having more knowledge about SRHR would help us to be prepared and able to take care of ourselves.   So, I guess you took part in SRHR activities, right? What helped you to become engaged as an educator? Yes. Honestly, there were a lot of benefits. Even though I started when I was at university, I still learned a lot of stuff that I didn`t know before. At first I didn’t care so much about some of the issues, I just thought they were interesting and it would probably be useful to know more. But when I started being a part of a group, it was about gender equality and other SRHR issues, and it was good to learn more about something that you need in your life.    * SRHR = sexual and reproductive health and rights Interview conducted by Elionita Rexhepaj and Elsa Rexhepaj, members of the regional youth group of the IPPF EN project Youth Voices, Youth Choices, funded by MSD for Mothers

We spoke to young people from the Western Balkans about how their access to sexual and reproductive health and rights was affected by the COVID pandemic, and asked them about their vision for re-designing a more youth-friendly future in which young people can flourish.  Tarin Husic is a 21-year-old student from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Tarin, describe your experience of access to SRHR* education, information and care before and during COVID. Before COVID I was in high school where we had a few different education sessions and lectures about this topic. As we were not that familiar with a lot of things regarding SRHR, that was the time we should have been learning about it. After the pandemic started, life turned upside down and everything strived to be held online. During COVID, I had some problems relating to SRHR, so I wanted to inform myself more and more. One of the ways was to surf the internet and find all the necessary information. Doctors were better options, as we can take them more seriously. They would always draw my attention to SRHR-related issues, and in that way, I was able to gain knowledge and more information.   Did anything change for the better for you during the pandemic in terms of access to SRHR? During the pandemic, I had a lot of time to think about things like SRHR and to pay more attention to my health in general. The internet was full of different information, including SRHR. I think that education, especially after the peak of the pandemic, should be taken more seriously, since there is a chance that people will pay much more attention to their health and how to improve it, or how to protect themselves, after surviving all those moments of isolation and restrictions.   What was the biggest obstacle to your SRHR during the pandemic? How could decision-makers/medical professionals have removed this obstacle?   Honestly, the internet sometimes can be an obstacle. You always find the harshest facts and information, besides what is useful. As you read all those things, your thoughts become more negative, and you start thinking in the wrong direction. Doctors' role is to give us the right information - otherwise we get carried away. We need them to be available and able to explain things, as well as drawing our attention to what is most important.   What lessons should governments and professionals who work with youth learn from the pandemic about how to look after young people’s health and wellbeing in a crisis? I think the best way is to talk to young people and to see in which direction they are thinking, to try changing their perspectives to be as positive as possible. Young people are very often afraid to freely express themselves about something they need or about anything that is in their thoughts, and that should be taken into consideration. Sometimes they need to be given space to relax and talk about SRHR openly, since it is not yet a common topic in our surroundings.   What is your number 1 recommendation on what is needed to make services more youth-friendly? I think that workshops, projects, and educational programs could be very useful to raise young people’s the awareness, knowledge and skills, since this topic tends to be avoided at our age. It would be important to try and organize some kind of education or just workshops that would keep young people interested. Then the topic would become less taboo and people would talk more openly about it, because in our country not many people have developed a culture of talking about topics like SRHR.   * SRHR = sexual and reproductive health and rights Interview conducted by Ajla-Ena Burnazovic, a member of the regional youth group of the IPPF EN project Youth Voices, Youth Choices, funded by MSD for Mothers

We spoke to young people from the Western Balkans about how their access to sexual and reproductive health and rights was affected by the COVID pandemic, and asked them about their vision for re-designing a more youth-friendly future in which young people can flourish.  This 23-year-old LGBTIQ man from Bosnia and Herzegovina is a medical worker and an activist for youth SRHR*. As a volunteer peer educator, he supports other young people to learn and develop crucial life skills relating to their sexual and reproductive health.   Describe your experience of access to SRHR education, information and care before and during COVID. Before COVID, I received information through some NGOs and if I went directly to the doctor. Very little was said about these topics in our country and information was only visible if I searched for it myself. Then during the pandemic everything moved to the internet and a lot of information started to be shared on social networks.   Did anything change for the better for you during the pandemic in terms of access to SRHR? The pandemic has helped a lot in terms of better content and more accurate information on the internet. A new trend has been born, where influencers started to create content and dedicate their profiles to these topics. Thanks to the excellent response, this trend continued even after COVID and became part of everyday life. We forgot how to do things in person, so we left a lot of it to online platforms. I think that no matter how many shortcomings there are, it is very good because of the availability of information to everyone.   What was the biggest obstacle to your SRHR during the pandemic? How could decision-makers/medical professionals have improved this?   Unfortunately, during the pandemic, SRHR was not always in focus because of the “war” response to the virus. The high death rate and people’s fear of COVID meant that there was not much focus on the topic, and little media attention. People sadly still don’t understand the importance of SRHR. What could have changed is that doctors and politicians should have spoken more publicly about this topic and raised people’s awareness, but unfortunately they didn't do that.   What lessons should governments and professionals who work with youth learn from the pandemic about how to look after young people’s health and wellbeing in a crisis? A very important lesson they should have learned is that they were not taking the right approach towards young people. If we have interesting and educational content, peer educators and youth leaders can easily reach them. It’s important to talk about taboo topics that every young person faces. We can only achieve change by changing the approach and understanding their needs.   What is your number 1 recommendation on what is needed to make services more youth-friendly? I recommend that more workshops be held to provide information to health workers and people who work directly with young people so that they can provide answers to their questions. Care and support providers are often prevented from providing young people with accurate information because they themselves learn and receive information in an old-fashioned way. Lack of knowledge is the key to the problem.   * SRHR = sexual and reproductive health and rights Interview conducted by Azra Mehmedovic, a member of the regional youth group of the IPPF EN project Youth Voices, Youth Choices, funded by MSD for Mothers

We spoke to young people from the Western Balkans about how their access to sexual and reproductive health and rights was affected by the COVID pandemic, and asked them about their vision for re-designing a more youth-friendly future in which young people can flourish.  Lana is a 17-year-old from Bosnia and Herzegovina who works as a volunteer peer educator, supporting other young people to develop crucial life skills relating to SRHR*.   Lana, describe your experience of access to SRHR education, information and care before and during COVID. In terms of overall SRHR education before and during COVID-19, I was very uneducated. At the beginning, I was 14 years old, so personally, I considered talking about SRHR topics very embarrassing and taboo. I was a kid and did not know that it is totally normal and important to talk about SRHR at that age. I live in a country where it is usually seen as “weird” to talk about SRHR, especially at my age at the time, so I felt like I shouldn’t participate in discussions on the topic. I was very uninformed and took minimal care of myself as regards SRHR, especially during COVID. It was a very hard time for everyone, and I was still finding myself, so it was really difficult for me to put priorities in the right place, especially with everything closed down; I had no access to any kind of SRHR education.   Did anything change for the better for you during the pandemic in terms of access to SRHR? How are things now? Sadly, nothing changed for the better during the pandemic. I was still just a kid and SRHR was a taboo topic for me and I was very uninformed. Luckily, after the pandemic, I started to realize that it’s totally normal and important to talk about sexual and reproductive health. Now I tend to help everyone who feels unsafe talking about it to realize that it is not taboo, as I used to think, and actually very important. I feel safe in my own body and I make sure I access education about SRHR as much as I need to. I make sure to take care of myself as regards to healthcare and I have been feeling a lot better, happier and safer since.   What was the biggest obstacle/challenge to your SRHR during the pandemic? How could decision-makers/medical professionals have removed this obstacle?   My biggest challenge was overcoming the fact that SRHR is not seen as a normal topic to talk about and cover, especially for a 14 year old. Speaking to a professional, either a medical professional or my parents, would have helped a lot. I would have felt safer talking about the topic and would have realized from a young age that it is a totally normal topic to cover and is important for keeping myself healthy and happy.   What lessons should governments and professionals who work with youth learn from the pandemic about how to look after young people’s health and wellbeing in a crisis? Listening. A lot of young people, including me, were afraid to open up. I lacked in-person communication and it has affected my SRHR education a lot. Personally, a heartfelt recommendation to professionals working with young people on this topic is to talk with them as much as they need to and as much as those young people feel the need to talk. I think it is very important for us to get heard and someone listening to our insecurities about talking over a specific topic would help youngsters open up and understand that it is not a taboo topic. COVID has made me realize that, if I have a question or a problem as regards to SRHR, I would want myself to be heard and for a professional to really listen to me and help me. I think it would help other young people a lot.   What is your number 1 recommendation on what is needed to make services more youth-friendly? What difference would this make in the life of a young person like you? Again, greater availability of professionals in health centres. It is very important for our voices and thoughts to be heard. It is a great way of helping us and making us understand that people really do listen to us and really do want to help us. It would help a lot, like it helped me.   What helped you to become engaged as a peer educator on SRHR? How has this experience been so far? I have been through a lot of things in life. I want to help people understand that it is okay if we all have our problems but I also want to help people lead their life in the right direction, overcoming those problems. I love helping people. I love seeing smiles on their faces after something that they thought might ruin their day and then overcoming it. It is the most beautiful thing ever. I want to educate people on various topics and help them understand that we, young people, are as much of a person as adults are. We have our own problems too. We also want to be heard. We also want to get educated on topics that are socially labelled as “inappropriate to youngsters”, but are as a matter of fact, just put that way by society and are totally normal to be addressed from teenage years. My experience as an educator has been wonderful. I had managed to help people open up, feel happier with themselves and in their bodies and realize that life is beautiful if you make it your own utopia. I love this hobby of mine and hope to continue it as long as I can.   * SRHR = sexual and reproductive health and rights Interview conducted by the Institute for Population and Development, IPPF's member in BiH, as part of the project  Youth Voices, Youth Choices, funded by MSD for Mothers