MEASURING PROGRESS

Approximately 260 million women in the world’s 69 poorest countries currently use a modern method of contraception. Sustaining this level of use between 2012 and 2020 will cost roughly US$10 billion through resources principally provided by country governments’ health budgets, supported by individuals’ out-of-pocket expenditures and external donor contributions. At the London Summit on Family Planning, the global community took a significant step to expand the availability of voluntary family planning information, services, and supplies. The goal is to enable a total of 380 million women and girls to choose and use contraception by 2020 through the commitment of resources equivalent to US$4.3 billion, above and beyond the level of funding provided for family planning in 2010.[1] 

This unprecedented declaration of support marks a significant step toward realizing the FP2020 vision that women and girls should have the same access to lifesaving contraceptives and services no matter where they live. With such an ambitious goal, it is clear that FP2020 must have an equally ambitious performance monitoring and accountability system devoted to improving the quality and availability of information for progress reporting, planning, evaluation, decision making, and advocacy at the community, country, and global levels. 

FP2020 is predicated on the belief that measurement and results are necessary to drive change. In the first year, FP2020 initiated activities to establish systems and infrastructure to monitor progress toward the FP2020 goal, to ensure that girls’ and women’s rights to voluntary contraception are respected and promoted, and to strengthen accountability for implementing financial, policy, and programming commitments made by country governments, donors, the UN, civil society, and others. Building accountability is at the heart of FP2020: we are all accountable to women and girls.

These activities, detailed throughout this report, included selecting core indicators and collating corresponding baseline data, improving the way in which family planning expenditures are tracked, and launching electronic collection of data in select countries. Importantly, FP2020 partners also came together to lay the groundwork for further developing and implementing a transformative measurement agenda over the life of FP2020 that will elevate the role of service statistics, identify innovations in data collection, find new ways to leverage these tools to impact the poorest and hardest-to-reach, and enhance capacity to measure rights-based programming. 





[1] Family Planning Summit 2012 data sources and methodology for calculating 2012 baseline, 2020 objectives, impacts, and costings by Family Planning Summit Metrics Group.