Uganda Prioritizes Voluntary Family Planning and Charts Course for a Rights-Based Approach

Blog post by Jan Kumar, EngenderHealth/RESPOND Project

The planets have aligned in Uganda over the past few weeks for a significant shift in the country’s national family planning (FP) program that sets it on a new and ground-breaking course. From July 28-30, 2014, the Ugandan Ministry of Health (MOH)—with support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)—hosted an event titled “Accelerating social and economic transformation through universal access to voluntary family planning.” President Museveni used this opportunity to accelerate the government’s commitment to FP2020 and to voice his endorsement for FP as a means to improve maternal health, reduce poverty, and support social and economic development. The meeting paved the way for the promotion of equitable access to a wide range of quality FP services that ensure full, free, and informed choice, as well as the protection and fulfillment of human rights for all Ugandan women and couples who wish to space or limit their childbearing.

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Championing Contraceptive Choice: Promoting and Protecting Rights beyond FP2020

Artwork by Sita Magnuson, The Value Web ®

Artwork by Sita Magnuson, The Value Web ®

The London Summit on Family Planning, which took place a year ago this month, kicked off a potentially new era for international family planning (FP). By focusing renewed attention, rallying political commitment, and garnering a substantial increase in pledged funding to support services, it raised FP on the global health and development agenda. The London Summit also reinvigorated the focus on human rights in FP programs, which coalesced in part around the concern that human rights could be sacrificed in the pursuit of the numerical goal of reaching 120 million new women and girls in the world’s poorest countries with FP information, services, and supplies by 2020 (known as FP2020). Attention to these issues has also been fueled by preparations to formulate the post-2015 development agenda that will follow the expiration of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Continue reading