$2.6 billion pledged for family planning
July 11th 2012
Rich countries have pledged $2.6bn over the next eight years at a family planning summit in London, in what was described as a breakthrough for the world’s poorest women and girls. The money, coupled with commitments from developing countries, is expected to provide access to family planning for 120 million women in the global south.
“This will be a breakthrough that will transform lives,” said the UK international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell. “The commitments made at the summit today will support the rights of women to determine freely, and for themselves, whether, when and how many children they have,” said Mitchell at a conference hosted by the Gates Foundation and the Department for International Development (DfID), designed to put what has been a politically loaded issue back on the global development agenda.
More than 20 developing countries made commitments to boost spending on family planning and to strengthen women’s rights to ease their access to contraception.
The summit’s organisers say commitments made at the summit will result in 200,000 fewer women dying in pregnancy and childbirth, more than 110m fewer unintended pregnancies, over 50m fewer abortions and nearly 3 million fewer babies dying in their first year of life.
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The aim of the London summit on family planning is to raise $4bn to expand access to contraception for 120 million women in the global south by 2020. According to the UN, about 220 million women in the south who do not want to get pregnant cannot get reliable access to contraception.
The UK has committed £516m ($801m) over eight years to achieving the summit goal of enabling an additional 120 million to have access to modern methods of family planning by 2020.
Read the entire article: The Guardian
More on this issue: World Population Day 2012
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