Achieving the London FP Summit Goal through Adhering to Voluntary Family Planning

Karen Hardee, Futures Group International
Shannon Harris, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Mariela Rodriguez, Futures Group

At the 2012 London FP Summit, world leaders/donors committed to providing resources to support programming to reach 120 million new FP users by 2020. Such growth in FP users is unprecedented. The Summit emphasized reproductive rights and voluntary FP. Despite this commitment to voluntarism, instances of coercion, for example, in China, India and Peru, among others, have made some wary of the potential for coercion to reemerge in FP policies and programs. It is important to understand each situation and how it occurred to develop approaches to ensure that these experiences are not repeated. With a literature review and expert interviews, we develop a framework to examine instances to coercion to understand the context and type of coercion, how it was uncovered and addressed. The paper offers recommendations to ensure voluntarism in FP as countries scale up policies and programs to reach the ambitious goal of the FP Summit.