Every
day, vulnerable women, especially those who are poor and are refugees, face
social, economic and geographic obstacles to voluntary family planning services
and information.
Fifty years ago today, the
then-Secretary-General of the United Nations established UNFPA, the United
Nations Population Fund, as a trust fund. And since 1969, when UNFPA began
operations, it has been helping to remove obstacles to family planning and to
enable women to exercise their reproductive rights. UNFPA contributed to a near
doubling of modern contraceptive use worldwide, from 36 per cent in 1970 to 64
per cent in 2016.
Despite
the dramatic progress, enormous challenges remain: some 214 million women in
developing countries lack safe and effective family planning methods. Most of
these women live in the 69 poorest countries. Fulfilling their unmet demand
would save lives by averting 67 million unintended pregnancies and reducing by
one third the estimated 303,000 annual maternal deaths.
Better
reproductive health care, including voluntary family planning, can bolster
economies and contribute to sustainable development by empowering women to
complete their education, join the paid labour force, be more productive in
their jobs, earn higher incomes and increase savings and investments. In
addition, for each additional dollar spent on contraceptive services above the
current level, the cost of pregnancy-related care is reduced by $2.30.
Investments
in family planning help lead to prosperity for all.
Family
planning, therefore, is critical to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 1,
to end poverty. It is also key to achieving other Goals, such as ending hunger
as well as promoting good health and gender equality.
UNFPA has set an ambitious, transformative
goal to eliminate all unmet demand for family planning by 2030. On this World
Population Day, we call on all governments and stakeholders to help achieve
this goal. UNFPA also calls on the 179 governments that endorsed the Programme
of Action of the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and
Development to fulfill their commitments to achieve universal access to sexual
and reproductive health, including voluntary family planning. Not only is this
a matter of protecting health and rights, but it is also a matter of investing
in economic development as well as humanity’s prosperity and progress.
