Family planning summit plans to ensure women’s unmet need for contraception is met by 2020

The London Summit on Family Planning takes place on July 11^th. Led by DFID and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the summit will announce an unprecedented global commitment to advancing the cause of family planning. The intent: to ensure that by 2020, 120 million women’s unmet need for contraception is met.

IPPF (the world’s largest sexual and reproductive health and rights movement) has been at the forefront of shaping the debate. And on the eve of the summit, the organisation reports on its work in 2011. Work which shows that committed service delivery on the ground is what will provide the answer to the summit’s call to action.

IPPF is a federation of Member Associations (MAs). Each one provides services in a particular country. 91% of the world’s nations (172 countries) are served by IPPF. The organisation has 30,000 staff, supported by over a million volunteers. It is a formidable force in sexual and reproductive health (SRH).

No other organisation has such a comprehensive SRH network. And – as it celebrates 60 years since its foundation - no other organisation has such long and hard-won experience in the field.

What it all adds up to, in figures, can seem overwhelming. In 2011, IPPF delivered 90 million SRH services to 33 million people worldwide: nearly 250,000 services every day. Almost 3 services every second.

In 2011, IPPF helped 2.6 million women avoid unintended pregnancy. It helped 710,000 women avert unsafe abortions. It protected women’s health and they changed women’s lives. Without IPPF, millions of women worldwide would not have had any access to family planning whatsoever.

Crucially, 73% of the beneficiaries of IPPF’s work last year belonged to some of the world’s poorest, most vulnerable and most marginalised countries and communities: those whom the London Summit on Family Planning most urgently seeks to access.

The 2011 report demonstrates how IPPF actively prioritises and engages with the world’s young people. 42% of its services are dedicated to under 25s. IPPF knows that if the summit is to succeed in its stated aim, if the world is to secure a safer SRH future, and if sustainable development is ever to become a reality, the rising generation needs information, education and ready access to services. 

For, with, and on behalf of young people, Member Associations run drop-in centres, outreach projects, schools sessions, counselling services, peer to peer education initiatives, and advice and information lines. Where there is a need, they seek to meet it: however stretched the resources, however hostile and regressive are local laws and attitudes.

This is the second front in IPPF’s work: national and international advocacy to defend and promote the basic human right to sexual and reproductive health. A right which can only be realised by providing every individual with the education, the information, the services and the support they need to exercise the choices they wish to make, free from fear, coercion, or prejudice.

To this end, in 2011, IPPF successfully campaigned right round the world for changes in legislation. Over the course of the year, 116 national laws were changed, through the influence of IPPF, its MAs and its partners. Changes which liberalised laws on education, access, prioritisation of SRH, support for people living with HIV, and access to safe and legal abortion and emergency contraception.

July 11^th is a marker in the sand. One drawn by governments, politicians, and civil society. One which says all women, everywhere, must have the right to decide if, when, and how often they have children, for the sake of their health, and for the sake of nations.

This is the most fundamental principle. What IPPF’s work in 2011 so amply demonstrates is what we all must do, and what efforts we all must make, to turn that principle into practical reality.