State of World Population 2012 - Country Page List - UNFPA

CHAPTER
ONE
The right to
family planning
A fundamental human right
Planning the number and timing of one’s children is today largely taken for
granted by the millions of people who have the means and power to do so. Yet
a large proportion of the world’s people do not enjoy the right to choose when
and how many children to have because they have no access to family planning
information and services, or because the quality of services available to them is so
poor that they go without and are vulnerable to unintended pregnancy.
t
Mothers at
a women's
advocacy centre
attend a talk on
contraception in
Pakistan.
©Panos/Peter Barker
The international community agreed in 1994
at the International Conference for Population
and Development, ICPD, that family planning
should be made available to everyone who wants
it, and that governments should create the conditions
that support people’s right to plan their
families. But recent research shows that 222
million women in developing countries today
do not have the means to delay pregnancies and
childbearing. Millions of women in developed
countries are also unable to plan their families
because they lack access to information, education,
and counselling on family planning, cannot
access contraceptives and face social, economic
or cultural barriers, including discrimination,
coercion and violence in the context of their
sexual and reproductive lives.
The number and spacing of children can have
an impact on the schooling prospects, income
and well-being of women and girls, and also
of men and boys. The right to family planning
therefore permits the enjoyment of other rights,
including the rights to health, education, and the
achievement of a life with dignity. An informed
rights-based approach to family planning is the
most cost-effective intervention for addressing
maternal mortality and morbidity. Ensuring the
right to family planning can ultimately accelerate
a country’s progress towards reducing poverty and
achieving development goals. Universal access
to reproductive health services, including family
planning, is sufficiently important that it is part
of the United Nations Millennium Development
Goals. And it will be fundamental to achieving
many of the priority goals emerging from the
post-2015 sustainable development framework.
Although family planning is a fundamental
right, it is met at times with ambivalence from
communities, health systems and governments.
The commitment to family planning can be
undermined by its association with sexual activity
and its meaning in the context of social and
cultural values. In practical terms, concerns
with extending access to specific population
THE STATE OF WORLD POPULATION 2012
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