Join FP2020 by Making a Commitment

• The UK is on track to meet its commitment to increase its annual spending on family planning from £90 million per year to £180 million per year by 2020. This increased support has resulted in almost 5 million additional women being reached with family planning services by mid-2014, almost 4% of the 2020 target^[1].

• By 2012, DFID programmes are estimated to have saved over 16,000 maternal deaths using LiST modelling^[2]. This is good progress but the gains have to be sustained.

[1] DFID Departmental Results Framework

[2] Lives Saved Analysis for the Department of International Development (DFID) Year 2: Global Programs 2010-2012 and 2010-2015

In the financial years 2013/14 and 2014/15, the UK spending on family planning has been above the 2020 goal (£206m and £203m respectively).  The UK support will provide 24 million girls and women with family planning by 2020. This will avert over 20 million unintended pregnancies and prevent around 42,000 deaths. 

• The UK is a proud supporter of FP2020, supporting family planning programmes in 20 countries as well as a large global programme to enhance reproductive health commodity security. We also support non-governmental organisations such as Marie Stopes International, International Planned Parenthood Foundation and Save the Children. 

• The UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) began funding a Scaling Up Family Planning Programme (SUFP) in Zambia in 2012. Up until this time, family planning was integrated within broader primary healthcare but had, in reality, not been progressing much as Zambia has one of the highest fertility rates in the region. After the London Summit in 2012, with the help of partners, including SUFP, Zambia produced its first ever 8 year family planning scale up plan and the issue was firmly placed on the national agenda. SUFP now operates in 26 districts and has reached over 100,000 new users with family planning.   

• The UK has recently approved and begun the tendering process for a new programme to support civil society to build accountability to citizens for delivering on the financial and policy commitments of FP2020 made by governments. This will ensure that programmes respect and promote women’s and girls’ rights to determine reproductive choices and is likely to begin in early 2015.

Since 2012, the UK government has supported family planning (FP) programmes in the majority of our focus countries (currently in 18 out of 28).  Most of these involve strengthening the health system to deliver a quality service as well as working closely with communities and families to explain the benefits of family planning and to change social norms in this area.  Some of our country programmes work in fragile settings and also in the hardest to reach areas.  Examples include some of the work in Pakistan as well as a project to reach pastoral women in Ethiopia.  Other programmes, for example in India, work with the private sector. 

Apart from country level work, DFID (with other donors) supports family planning through a number of global programmes that explore innovative contracting approaches and focus on understanding markets, demand and data.  DFID is the largest donor (£356m from 2013 to 2020) to the Global Programme for Reproductive Health Commodity Security, implemented through UNFPA and providing contraceptive commodities and supply system strengthening capacity building to 46 countries around the world, according to their needs.  This programme provides 27% of the global commodities required to reach the FP2020 goal of 120 million.   

DFID also supports the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition, a group of over 300 members from private and public sectors.  The RHSC fosters innovation, sharing and discussion around reproductive health commodities.  We provide support to the Clinton Health Access Initiative to give technical assistance to some of the new family planning market shaping initiatives that have emerged. 

With the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, DFID supports the FP2020 Secretariat based at the UN Foundation and tasked with sustaining the global movement towards increased access to family planning in 69 countries.

Most of DFID’s country programmes have a component focused on social and cultural barriers to access and some of the work of the FP2020 secretariat also lies in this area.  The UK has long pushed the international community to break the silence on adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights, including family planning.  Whilst a lot more remains to be done, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana and Zambia all have programmes specifically targeted at young people and there is an increasing focus on addressing the social barriers to contraceptive uptake, including discrimination against young or unmarried women and social norms around women and girls being able to make their own decisions to use modern contraception. 

Most of DFID’s work in supporting partners to ensure safeguards against coercion and discrimination has been through the Rights and Empowerment working group of FP2020.  DFID was instrumental in the setting up of this group and its ongoing aims and objectives.  The group has been working to ensure rights-based programming and to embed rights within all aspects of family planning work, including monitoring. 

In addition, DFID funds a strategic accountability programme to ensure that governments and family planning service providers in up to 10 countries are held to account by their citizens to deliver the full family planning commitments made under FP2020 and ensure full, free and informed family planning choice for all.  The programme, currently in its design phase, will run for an initial period of three years with the possibility of a two year extension if it is achieving the desired impact on the ground.