The Road Ahead for Young People Will Be Contingent on Governments Keeping Promises on Family Planning

Today, PAI marks International Youth Day with the release of a new report, The Road Ahead for Young People and Family Planning. This report examines where young people are represented in the budgeted activities within governments’ costed implementation plans (CIPs) and whether these activities are the most effective for increasing young people’s access to contraception. Most of the world’s young people do not have access to basic sexual and reproductive health care and information, and nearly one in five girls in the developing world will become pregnant before the age of 18. This undercuts health and wellbeing, education and other opportunities for the largest-ever generation of young people.

The first report, which is part of an ongoing series, looks at the CIPs of five countries: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Nigeria. CIPs give countries a clear path to address family planning goals, make progress on commitments, and improve family planning knowledge and access to methods. The funding—or lack thereof—of effective programming for young people in countries’ CIPs reveal whether youth are prioritized and help predict what family planning services for them will look like in the coming years.

“In addition to providing a roadmap for funding family planning activities, costed implementation plans serve as a litmus test for advocates to gauge the extent to which policymakers are living up to their commitments to young people,” said report author Katelyn Bryant-Comstock, research associate at PAI.

“Many gaps remain in allocation of funding for effective youth family planning programming. We will need sustained advocacy to ensure that governments are prioritizing investment in young people as part of their implementation of the sustainable development agenda.”

In early August, world leaders reached a consensus on the new sustainable development agenda, which calls for ensuring comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education and services for all, increasing gender equality, and improving access to economic opportunity. Without fulfilling the sexual and reproductive rights of young people, the achievement of these goals is impossible.

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PAI champions policies that put women in charge of their reproductive health. We work with policymakers in Washington and our network of partners in developing countries to remove roadblocks between women and the services and supplies they need. For 50 years, we’ve helped women succeed by upholding their basic rights. To learn more, visit pai.org.