Renewed global commitment to providing contraceptive services

In 2010, the United Nations launched Every Woman Every Child as a global movement to mobilise and intensify action to address major health challenges facing women and children around the world, including improving access to effective contraception.

Building on this movement, in 2012 partners from across the world came together at the London Summit on Family Planning to support the right of women and girls to decide, freely and for themselves, whether, when and how many children they have. At this summit, more than 20 governments made commitments to address the policy, financing, delivery and socio-cultural barriers to women accessing contraceptive information, services and supplies. Donors also pledged an additional US$2.6 billion in funding. One outcome of this summit was the global partnership ‘Family Planning 2020 (FP2020)’.

Family Planning 2020 (FP2020)

Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) aims to expand access to family planning information, services, and supplies to an additional 120 million women and girls in 69 of the world’s poorest countries by 2020 (Figure 1). A full list of countries is available in the See Also section.

Figure 1. Estimated progress to 2015 and 2020, 69 countries ≤$2500 GNI per capita. WHO (2012).¹

FP2020 adheres to the following principles to support the goal of reaching 120 million additional women by 2020:

• Protection of the human rights of women and girls including through policies and mechanisms to ensure informed choice of a broad range of high-quality, safe, effective, acceptable and affordable contraceptive methods; non-discrimination, and assurance that women and girls are fully informed, and not coerced by any means.
• Integration of family planning within the continuum of care for women and children (including HIV-related services); and development of mechanisms that address barriers to access to affordable and high-quality information, supplies and services for family planning, yet are adaptable and can be expanded to meet a broader set of unmet health and development needs of women and children.
• Universal access to voluntary contraceptive information, services and supplies, within the context of integrated programs to achieve sexual and reproductive health and rights and the health-related MDGs.
• Equity in policies and program design and implementation, such as the removal of policy and financial barriers and the development of public and private delivery mechanisms, so that the poorest and most vulnerable women and girls have ready access to affordable, high-quality family planning information, supplies and services.
• Empowering women to decide whether and when they wish to become pregnant as well as how many children they wish to have.
• Participatory development of country plans based on consultations with, and the views of, all stakeholders, especially poor and marginalised girls and women.
• Strong partnerships among and between a broad base of stakeholders—community, governments, political leaders, civil society organisations (including faith-based organizations), the private sector, donors and multilaterals—to help ensure high-quality service delivery, outreach to more disadvantaged groups, building community support and program accountability to the people served.
• Commitment to results, transparency and accountability to ensure countries and the global community track progress towards results, as well as monitoring and assessing protection of human rights and the extent to which the poor and marginalized women and adolescent girls are reached.

Collaboration with Working Groups

FP2020 collaborates with the following four Working Groups that provide technical guidance and support.

Country Engagement

This group works with existing partners to provide additional support to countries as they develop, implement, and monitor progress against their transformational family planning plans, building on existing country plans wherever possible, and within the context of countries’ wider RMNCH and health sector plans. Further information on country engagement from FP2020

Market Dynamics

This group seeks to improve global and national markets to sustainably ensure choice and equitable access to a broad range of high quality, affordable contraceptive methods in target countries. Further information on market dynamics from FP2020

Performance Monitoring & Evidence

This group enables the collection, analysis and use of data necessary to measure FP2020’s progress and to bolster accountability for implementing the financial, policy and programming commitments made by governments, donors, the UN, civil society and others. Further information on performance monitoring and evidence from FP2020

Rights & Empowerment

This group leads in developing a rights-based family planning framework to guide FP2020 and will ensure their work is deeply embedded in that of the Country Engagement, Market Dynamics and the Performance Monitoring & Accountability Working Groups. Further information on rights and empowerment from FP2020