Lancet Series on Family Planning, published July 10, 2012

The Lancet Series on Family Planning was published ahead of the London Summit on Family Planning. It brings together the latest thinking underpinning the Summit, clearly showing how lack of access to family planning carries a huge price, not only in terms of women's and children's health and survival but also in economic terms. The series comprises an article on Maternal deaths averted by contraceptive use: an analysis of 172 countries by Saifuddin Ahmed, Qingfeng Li, Li Liu and Amy O Tsui and a series of five papers: Global population trends and policy options by Alex C Ezeh, John Bongaarts and Blessing Mberu; Contraception and health by John Cleland, Agustin Conde-Agudelo, Herbert Peterson, John Ross and Amy Tsui; Demographic change and carbon dioxide emissions by Brian C O’Neill, Brant Little, Leiwen Jiang, Kirk R Smith, Shonali Pachauri, Michael Dalton and Regina Fuchs; The economic consequences of reproductive health and family planning by David Canning and T Paul Schultz; and Use of human rights to meet the unmet need for family planning by Jane Cottingham, Adrienne Germain and Paul Hunt.

The paper on Use of human rights to meet the unmet need for family planning addresses the concerns of many NGOs (particularly those with a feminist perspective) about the importance of ensuring that the rights of women and girls are respected and protected in the rolling out of the programmes that will be put in place to provide family planning to an additional 120 million women and girls in the world’s poorest countries by 2020. It discusses the establishment of human rights law and expansion of standards for sexual and reproductive health, including family planning through treaties and covenants such as the International Covenant on Economic and Social Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which are legally binding on those countries that have ratified them.

The paper also refers to groups whose specific needs must be addressed but who are often not captured in the standard survey definition or practice. These include unmarried adolescent girls who are sexually active as well as “refugee and internally displaced women, those in stigmatized occupations such as sex work, those who are otherwise stigmatized, such as rape victims, women with disabilities, HIV infection, or AIDS, and those from religious and ethnic minorities”. In addition, it clearly states how a rights-based approach can be used to overcome barriers to access, including inadequate supplies of safe and effective commodities, poor quality services, conscientious objection and lack of community engagement.

Finally, the paper addressed issues of accountability, mechanisms for which range from “national courts, national human rights institutions, international human rights treaty bodies, democratically elected local health councils, patients’ committees, professional disciplinary proceedings, and other civil society organizations”. It also refers to recently introduced mechanisms such as the Independent Expert Review Group and the national accountability mechanisms, introduced as a result of the recommendations of the UN Secretary-General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health.