Family Planning and the ICPD

The problem

“The full range of modern family planning methods still remains unavailable to at least 350 million couples worldwide, many of whom say they want to space or prevent another pregnancy. Survey data suggest that approximately 120 million additional women worldwide would be currently using a modern family planning method if more accurate information and affordable services were easily available.” ICPD, Para 7.13

The promise

“All countries should take steps to meet the family planning needs of their populations as soon as possible and should, in all cases by the year 2015, seek to provide universal access to a full range of safe and reliable family planning methods and to related reproductive health services…” ICPD Para 7.16

UNFPA’s strategic approach

UNFPA’s strategy for promoting family planning consists of six elements:

• To help couples and individuals meet their reproductive health needs in a framework that promotes optimum health, responsibility and family well-being.
• To prevent unwanted pregnancies and reduce incidence of high-risk pregnancies
• To make quality family planning services affordable, acceptable and accessible.
• To improve the quality of family planning advice, information, education and communication, counselling and services
• To increase the participation and sharing of responsibility of men in the actual practice of family planning
• To promote breastfeeding to enhance birth spacing.

How are we doing?

Family planning programmes encourage lower fertility. They accounted for almost one third of the global decline in fertility levels between 1972 and 1994. The effects of programmes on fertility were particularly pronounced in Asia, accounting for more than two thirds of the decline in fertility. But they were intermediate in Latin America and the Arab States and weak in Africa.

Effects of family planning programmes on unwanted fertility are even clearer. In some analyses, population programmes account for 40-50 per cent of the change. Programmes reduce unwanted fertility by making reproductive health services accessible, and involving NGOs and the private sector. Universal access to services would enable women and their partners to have only the children they want.

Education, information and communication are important for the success of population programmes. Better information makes it possible and acceptable for communities and families to discuss and act on all sorts of issues related to reproductive health: how to reduce maternal, infant and child deaths and prevent unplanned pregnancies; how to encourage discussion and mutual decision-making by women and their partners; how to free women for broader social participation; and how to reduce the stigma and confront the threat of HIV/AIDS.

Continued progress depends on continued investment, domestic and international.