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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

One year after its launch, FP2020 already has achieved many successes. The group has established a global governance framework; public-private partnerships are already increasing access to contraceptives; and many of the countries that attended the London conference have set concrete goals for their futures.

Earlier this year, Zambia launched its first national family planning strategy, and it is now working closely with religious and tribal leaders to provide family planning information and services to remote regions, using mobile health services to reach them.

Sierra Leone has seen an increase in the number of young men and women who are accessing contraception through Marie Stopes International. The country has also increased its family planning health budget by 1 percent, and raised its annual health budget from 8 to 13 percent.

Senegal’s government is hoping to increase the number of women using contraceptives from 12 to 27 percent by 2015. To reach this target, Senegal has pledged to double its overall budget for its family planning program. It is also working to improve its contraceptive supply chain.

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.”