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n international conference on family planning kicked off in Kigali aiming at strengthening the commitment of governments and stakeholders to speed up family planning programs worldwide.

As many as 3,700 participants including world leaders, donor agencies, academics, civil society organizations and family planning advocates are gathering for the four-day International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP), which started Monday.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Investing for a Lifetime of Returns”.

Unfortunately, there are no delegates from the Indonesian National Population and Family Planning Agency (BKKBN) at the fifth conference.

Indonesia hosted the fourth ICFP in Nusa Dua, in January 2016, which was opened by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. During the conference in Bali, Jokowi showed his firm commitment to accelerating and revitalizing Indonesia’s stagnant family planning program.

“President Jokowi indeed followed up on his commitments and a bigger budget was provided for family planning,” ICFP organizing committee chairman Jose G. “Oying” Rimon II told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

Indonesia’s commitment to strengthening its family planning program has been shown by increased funding from the central government.

Despite complex laws and confusing regulations, family planning has since 2017 been explicitly included in a program that can use various types of funding including Village Funds and other financial resources to finance the Population, Family Planning and Family Development program, as well as scaling up the program in accordance with the village’s needs.

The change came only after Indonesia saw an increased Total Fertility Rate (TFR), which rocketed to 2.51 in 2007.

Indonesia increased its family planning budget to Rp 2.1 trillion (US$141.44 million) in 2011 and is further increasing it to Rp 5.5 trillion for 2018 and 2019.

“However, there is a need to strengthen the BKKBN as a lead agency to improve the policy environment and program implementation, especially at the regional and village levels,” said Rimon, who is also director at the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health (JHSPH) and director of the Challenge Initiative Project.

Once the role model for the best practice in the world, Indonesia’s family planning declined soon after the fall of president Soeharto’s New Order regime in 1998.

Rapid population growth remains a delicate issue in Indonesia. The Indonesian Population Projection estimated that the country’s TFR would stand at 2.1 between 2020 and 2030 and at 1.99 between 2030 and 2035. The population is expected to rise to 296.4 million by 2030 and 305.6 million by 2035.

Indonesia’s population grew 1.19 percent between 2015 and 2020, decreasing from 1.38 percent in 2010-2015. It is estimated that the population will be 271 million in 2020.

“An increasing population means the country will need more jobs, food, health and education facilities, which we cannot afford,” Gadjah Mada University’s professor on reproductive health and population, Siswanto Agus Wilopo, told the Post in Kigali.