WUNRN
FAMILY PLANNING 2020 EMPOWERS WOMEN
WORLDWIDE
By Anna
King | August 9, 2013
Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) celebrated its first anniversary in July. The
group, which came out of last year’s London Summit on Family Planning that was
hosted by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation and the government of the United Kingdom, aims to reach every
woman in the world who does not want to be pregnant but does not currently use
family planning methods. More specifically, FP2020 was
launched to ensure that commitment-makers at the summit delivered on their
pledges to guarantee that an additional 120 million women gain access to family
planning services and contraceptives by 2020.
While her husband holds their youngest child, Twesigye Christente waits to receive a long-acting contraceptive at Uganda's Kinaaba Health Center II, in June 2012. (UNFPA/Omar Gharzeddine)
Representatives from over 20
governments were in attendance at the London summit, which discussed how best
to advocate for the rights of women and girls in developing countries to have
safe access to family planning services. The governments of Bangladesh, Burkina
Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi,
Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra
Leone, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe all made
commitments. In doing so, they agreed to address the policies, financing,
delivery and socio-cultural barriers to access contraceptives and family
planning services that women and girls face.
Donor countries, which included Australia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the
Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan and South
Korea, joined multilateral organizations, NGOs, civil society, and the private
sector in pledging $2.6 billion in funding.
Organizational
Structure
FP2020
is hosted by the UN Foundation and partners with governments, civil society,
donors, the private sector and the research and development community to
increase access to contraceptives and family-planning information to men and
women around the world. FP2020 operates under the umbrella of UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s Every Woman Every Child initiative,
which works to mobilize global action on women’s and children’s health issues.
An 18-member “Reference Group” leads the organization’s strategic planning
processes and is co-chaired by Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, the executive director
of UNFPA, and Chris Elias, the president of the global development program of
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Four working groups guide its mission.
One focuses on market dynamics, helping to reduce the price of contraceptives
and seeking out generic manufacturers. Another works on performance monitoring
and accountability, measuring the performance of FP2020 and finding consensus
regarding core indicators of success, and then sharing that information with
governments and donors.
Another working group looks at rights and empowerment, and guides the other working
groups on rights-based approaches to family planning. The fourth works on
country management, encouraging countries to take ownership of family planning
issues and working with donors in those countries to ensure that family
planning is seen not as a stand-alone intervention, but as something that fits
within the larger framework of maternal and newborn health.
The working groups are operated by a task team that is responsible for the
implementation of day-to-day activities. The task team coordinates with other
entities and external groups and supports and implements the work of the
working groups.
Valerie DeFillipo, the director of FP2020, told The InterDependent that
about 260 million women in the world’s poorest countries currently use contraception,
and the organization has set itself the goal of reaching an additional 120
million women and girls by 2020, so that they can “decide freely, and for
themselves” on the number of children they have and when they will have them.
It is also about equity, DeFillipo explained. Women and girls in developing
countries should have equal access to life-saving contraceptives and quality
family planning services, which should be given to them via supportive
government policies and programming.
FP2020’s goal is to reach every woman in the world’s poorest 69 countries who
do not want to be pregnant but not currently use family planning methods. “If
we even reached 120 million, we would not have reached the unmet need for
contraception,” said DeFillipo. The new goal is both “reachable and ambitious,”
she continued, adding that it’s “important…to stretch, but not have a pie in
the sky number.”
In addition to providing family planning for 120 million more women, FP2020
works to maintain coverage for the approximately 260 million women in
developing countries who are currently using contraceptives. By 2020, the goal
is to deliver contraceptives, information and services to a total of 380
million women and girls, so they can plan their families effectively.
The unmet need for contraception is not something new. It’s a figure that’s
“been stubbornly out there,” according to DeFillipo, for a long time. The lack
of use of contraception is not simply because the methods are not physically
available. There is also a lack of knowledge and that, coupled with social and
cultural constraints, adds to the problem. The solution, DeFillipo maintained,
is for the global community to look at what it can do differently.
Family
Planning Success Stories
Meanwhile,
Indonesia is including contraceptive coverage in its national health insurance
plan and now ensures family planning access to all people, regardless of age or
marital status.
And in Nigeria, to extend access to family planning into communities that had
no access at all, the Planned Parenthood Federation of Nigeria (PPFN) pioneered
a “cluster model” that increases the geographic coverage of service provision
by placing five clinics within a radius of 12 miles. The clusters include
private providers, government clinics, community-based distributors,
faith-based organizations and PPFN.
In partnership with drug companies Merck and Bayer, as well as the UNFPA, the
Clinton Health Access Initiative, the Children’s Investment Foundation and the
governments of Norway, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S., two agreements have been
negotiated to make contraceptive implants Jadelle and Implanon available to
millions of women in the world’s poorest countries at a vastly reduced price.
FP2020, in partnership with Pfizer, the U.K.’s Department for International
Development, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the UNFPA, is
also working to increase the community-based distribution and delivery of
injectable contraceptives.
Other countries are set to make their own commitments at the next Family
Planning Conference in Ethiopia this November, where FP2020 will be launching
its first annual report.
Ultimately, FP2020 exists to help women and girls and to assist governments in
reaching their family planning goals, working on policy changes, communication
plans, information and all the elements that go into good public health
programming. “We’re behind the scenes,” DeFillipo concluded, “creating
environments that governments and countries can use to take a lead, and the
citizens and the private sector as well.”