State of World Population 2012 - Country Page List - UNFPA

CHAPTER
SIX
Making the right to
family planning universal
Almost 20 years have passed since the 179 governments represented at the
International Conference on Population and Development, ICPD, transformed
the way the world approaches sexual and reproductive health, including family
planning. While some progress has been made, there is still much work to be
done to realize the rights-oriented vision of the ICPD.
t
A couple with their
baby in Brazil.
©Panos/Adam Hinton
The ICPD Programme of Action defined sexual
and reproductive health and located family planning
among a broader interrelated set of rights.
It pointed beyond programmes to the social and
economic circumstances that shape people’s decisions
about their sexual and reproductive lives and
determine their ability to act on those decisions. It
highlighted the roles and needs of adolescents, men
and other groups not previously addressed. And it
emphasized the need for services to respect individual
rights and respond to individual preferences
in offering family planning.
For policymakers, international organizations,
governments and civil society, this new rightsbased
approach was seen as revolutionary, partly
because it created obligations for governments to
make reproductive health services and supplies
available to all. But was the shift experienced as
revolutionary by ordinary people, the individual
women, men, girls and boys the ICPD was
intended to help
Where the right to family planning has been
upheld and access to it increased, people have
benefited—through better health, higher incomes,
reductions in poverty and greater gender equality.
But the ICPD has not yet changed daily realities
for the hundreds of millions of people who want to
avoid or delay pregnancy but are unable to either
because they still have no reliable access to quality
contraception, information and services or because
they face insurmountable social, economic and
logistical obstacles.
These individuals have missed out on the
improvements in health, empowerment and
enjoyment of a range of other rights that family
planning can facilitate or catalyse. The challenges
are most acute in developing countries but exist
also in developed countries, where many women
and men are unable to access family planning, are
poorly served or are dissatisfied with the methods
they use.
The vision of the ICPD has yet to be translated
fully into a rights-based approach to sexual and
reproductive health policies and programmes,
with quality and access for all.
As a consequence, too many individuals still lack
the power to make decisions about family size and
the timing of their pregnancies.
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