December 2013 No. 2013/6

1 POPFACTS, No. 2013/6 December 2013

basic right of all couples and individuals is to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their

children and to have the information, education and means to do so. The twentieth anniversary in 2014 of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and the end of the Millennium Development Goals in 2015 prompt the question: what progress has been made in ensuring this right?

1. Unmet need for family planning remains high in the poorest parts of the world Unmet need for family planning reflects the gap between childbearing desires and contraceptive use. It is defined as the proportion of women of reproductive age who are fecund, want to stop or delay childbearing and are not using any method of contraception.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 25 per cent of women of reproductive age who are married or in a union have an unmet need for family planning. Also, four countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, eight countries in Asia and four countries in Oceania have an unmet need for family planning above 20 per cent according to the most recent data available1 (figure 1).

2. How do we measure the progress made since ICPD? The Key Actions for the Further Implementation of the Programme of Action of the ICPD set aspirational benchmarks to reduce the gap between childbearing desires and contraceptive use. The minimum benchmark was a reduction of this gap by at least 50 per cent by 2005. Will this minimum be fulfilled even by 2015?

Recent survey data on unmet need are limited for many countries. Thus, new model-based estimates and projections2 for 194 countries or areas were used to measure the progress made from 1990 to 2015 in enabling people to exercise their right to plan their families.

3. By 2015, few countries are likely to reduce unmet need for family planning by half Only 13 countries are projected to achieve a reduction in unmet need by half between 1990 and 2015 (figure 2), including only Swaziland from sub-Saharan Africa, and Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Iran, Morocco, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru and Viet Nam from other regions. These countries also have high projected levels of contraceptive use in 2015 (57 to 78 per cent).

Figure 1. Percentage of women with an unmet need for family planning (any method) among those aged 15 to 49 who are married or in a union: most recent data available 

 

Source: World Contraceptive Patterns 2013 (United Nation, 2013), available from www.unpopulation.org.  NOTE: The boundaries on this map do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations. 

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