This Global Public Health Special Issue ‘SRHR for the next decades: What's been achieved? What lies ahead?’ assesses progress 20 years after the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), which established the sexual and reproductive health and rights framework for population and health policy (United Nations [UN], 1995). Contributors from different regions demonstrate that the challenges recognised by the ICPD still stand, and that lessons learned provide a clear way forward for the world's governments as they convene at the United Nations to agree on priority actions, and a post-2015 global development agenda.