Denied Choices, Stolen Futures: How Lack of Reproductive Rights Is Failing the DRC’s Youth

GOMA, Democratic Republic of the Congo

“I wanted three children. I have already had five and the sixth is coming soon. I never had a choice,” said Ombeni Mburano, 31, sitting outside a health centre in Goma. Her story, shared with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), is echoed by millions of women and girls across the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) whose futures are being derailed by a lack of reproductive rights and choices.
UNFPA’s State of the World Population 2024 report reveals that 44 per cent of women and girls worldwide do not have the power to make decisions about their sexual and reproductive health. In the DRC, this rises alarmingly to 69 per cent. Poverty, child marriage, widespread sexual violence, displacement and inadequate healthcare services continue to rob women of control over their own bodies.

“In our country, it is not always you who decides whether you want a child or not. Sometimes it is your family, your husband or just life’s circumstances,” Ombeni told UNFPA (UNFPA, 2024).

For young people like Esther, a displaced teenager from Rutshuru in North Kivu Province, lack of choice has already rewritten her future. At just 18 years old and seven months pregnant, Esther moved in with her partner Samuel’s mother, Thérèse, because neither she nor Samuel had steady work or access to information about contraception. Samuel, only 25, is already repeating a cycle familiar to many young men here: unplanned parenthood and no means to support a growing family.

“When Esther got pregnant, I had no home, no job, no plans,” Samuel said. “My mother had to take her in, just as she did for my sister.”

According to the World Bank, more than 60 per cent of young people under 30 in the DRC lack access to stable formal employment and instead rely on informal, unstable work. For young parents like Samuel and Esther, this leaves little chance to break the cycle of poverty and lost opportunity (World Bank, 2024).
Insufficient access to contraception and reproductive health services only deepens the crisis. Recent data show that one in five women in the DRC wants to delay or avoid pregnancy but cannot access the necessary contraception (UNFPA, 2024). Adolescent birth rates remain among the highest in the world, with 11 per cent of births to mothers aged just 15 to 19.
At a UNFPA-supported health centre in Goma, midwife Espérance sees the impact first-hand.

“Many young women say they want to wait before having a child. But they have neither the means to protect themselves nor the ability to say no,” she explained.

In conflict-affected areas, the situation is even worse. Escalating violence has damaged health facilities, cut off communities and forced thousands to flee their homes. Yet UNFPA is working to ensure that reproductive health services continue to reach women and girls who need them most.

Mobile health teams, youth peer educators and community health workers are delivering contraceptives, information campaigns and referrals to clinics. UNFPA has also deployed 148 midwives and stocked health centres with reproductive health kits to help displaced women and host communities alike.

Esther and Samuel recently attended a prenatal consultation at Buhimba health centre in Goma, supported by UNFPA with funding from the European Union, Japan, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. There, they joined an information session on safe pregnancy and contraception options for after the baby is born.

“I did not know we could be so well received, even without money,” said Esther. “Now I feel safe, and Samuel also understands that we can decide together.”

Despite this progress, the needs still far outstrip available resources. In the first quarter of 2025, only 7 per cent of people targeted for sexual and reproductive health services under the DRC’s Humanitarian Needs Analysis and Response Plan were reached. The withdrawal of support from the United States has worsened the situation, cutting reproductive health funding by more than half and fuelling a surge in unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions and preventable deaths (UNFPA, 2025).

“When a girl becomes pregnant without meaning to, her life is often turned upside down,” said Dr Solange N. Ngane,

coordinator of UNFPA’s sexual and reproductive health programme in Goma.

“Investing in young people means allowing them to freely decide if they want to become parents, when and under what conditions. That is true reproductive justice.”

As Ombeni, Esther and countless others know too well, real choices are the difference between shaping a future and having it stolen by circumstance.

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