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Family planning, a human right: What this means in Indonesia
Family planning offers among the most cost-effective methods of reducing maternal mortality.
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Indonesia is recognized globally for its pioneering family planning efforts. (Shutterstock/Valeriya Anufriyeva)
T
he theme of this year’s World Population Day (July 11), “Family Planning is a human right”, reminds current and future generations that this hard-won human right should not be taken for granted, refuting any role for population control. The day is about reinforcing understanding of family planning (FP) within a rights-based paradigm, celebrating national achievements and repledging commitment to voluntary and informed family planning.
Fifty years ago, the United Nations human rights conference resolved in the 1968 Teheran Proclamation that “Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children.” Here the idea of FP was born as a rights-based issue — a human right for couples to exercise, not state-imposed population control.
Since then treaties, conventions and agreements relevant to reproductive health and rights have reaffirmed FP as a foundation for a range of rights. Apart from, among others, the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination and the 1995 Beijing Declaration, at the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development, 179 governments, including Indonesia, focused on FP as a basic human right rather than a means of achieving a population target.
They endorsed Principle 8: “All couples and individuals have the basic right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have the information, education and means to do so”.
