Achieving the London FP Summit Goal through Voluntary, Rights-based FP: What Can We Learn from Past Experiences with Coercion?

The London FP Summit on July 11, 2012 galvanized high level support to reach 120 million new family planning users by 2020. Such growth in FPusers would be unprecedented. The theme of rights was emphasized at the FP Summit. Despite this firm global commitment to voluntary, rights-based family planning programming, instances of coercion have occurred in FP programs. These experiences have made some wary of the potential for coercion to reemerge in FP policies and programs. A recent court ruling in Namibia has highlighted the pressures faced by HIV-positive women to stop childbearing, reminiscent of experiences in the West of targeting disabled women with contraception. It is important to fully understand each situation and how it occurred to develop approaches to ensure that these experiences are not repeated.

The paper examines instances of coercion in FP to understand the context, the type of coercion, how it was uncovered and how it was addressed. Using these examples, the paper offers recommendations for policy and program steps to ensure voluntarism in family planning and adherence to a rights-based approach as countries scale up programs to reach the ambitious goal of FP2020.