A/HRC/32/32 health services, including the following: restrictive laws and policies; unavailability of contraception or safe abortions; inaccessible services owing to lack of information, distance or cost; failure to ensure privacy and confidentiality; parental consent or notification requirements; provision of services in a manner that is disrespectful, hostile, judgemental or lacking sympathy; and discrimination against particular groups of adolescents, including those with disabilities, those living and working on the streets or in the sex trade and those from historically marginalized groups.18 States have positive human rights obligations to guarantee adolescents’ rights and meaningfully engage with them in identifying their needs and priorities. 17. Rapid globalization and associated social and cultural changes, reinforced by the digital world, mean that many adolescents inhabit a world very different from that of the adults around them in relation to information, the speed of change, social norms, risks, aspirations and opportunities. While these rapidly changing environments offer important opportunities for adolescents, they can also pose significant challenges to their rights, for example to privacy, informed consent and freedom from exploitation, with significant implications, in particular for their mental health and well-being. Furthermore, the speed of change can inhibit intergenerational understanding, challenging the capacity of parents and other caregivers to provide the guidance necessary to protect and promote adolescents’ right to health. 18. The lack of data disaggregated by age, sex and disability poses one of the biggest challenges to promoting adolescent rights. 19 Without adequate data, States lack evidence to inform health policy, identify gaps and support the allocation of appropriate resources. C. Opportunities for realizing the right to health 19. Adolescents are actors for social change, and are able to bring dynamism, flexibility, creativity and energy towards the realization of their own and others’ rights to health. States should adopt a human rights framework for adolescent health guided by the recognition of their strengths, capacities and contributions, while also addressing the impact of social determinants of health. Respecting and engaging with adolescents and treating them as a resource contributes to building foundations for emotional security, health, education and the skills needed for the full and effective realization of the right to health. 20. Adolescents have the right to play an increasingly important role in the determination of their own health care. Respect and recognition of their capacities is intrinsic to the enhancement of positive health outcomes. Forging partnerships with adolescents is the key to shaping an environment that enables the realization of their right to health. 21. In particular, adolescents’ leading role in using and shaping new communications technologies places them in a position to build and utilize networks to promote their right to health, for example through information dissemination, data gathering, health campaign design, health education, peer-to-peer education and counselling and conflict mediation. A number of e-health and web-based interventions and mobile applications can provide information, increase access to care, engage adolescents in treatment and initiate aftercare. These skills and capacities mean that adolescents are uniquely positioned to contribute to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular Goal 3, as well as to 18 19 6 WHO, Making Health Services Adolescent Friendly (2012). UNICEF, The State of the World’s Children 2011.