T

he stark absence of Indonesian officials at the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) in Kigali has done little to dampen the country’s commitment to global efforts in family planning, with representatives from youth groups, civil society and academia taking on a more active role this year.

During the conference, Sari Astuti Anggraini, a physician, presented UNALA, an innovative model developed by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) that engages the private sector in the delivery of health information and services for the youth in Yogyakarta.

The name UNALA stems from the ancient Sanskrit language and means “one’s ability to make decisions”. Yogyakarta was chosen as the site of the pilot project, owing to the city’s large population of young people and its reputation as an education hub where urban and rural youth mingle.

This year, the UNALA endeavors to provide services to 200,000 young people through its 55 clinics across the city. “I am very honored to be able to represent Indonesian youth at this prestigious gathering. I shared my experiences as a youth advisor and doctor with 600 other youth participants from around the world,” Anggraini told The Jakarta Post recently.

Twenty-two-year-old Neira Ardaneshwari, another participant at the conference, introduced Tabu ID, Indonesia’s first social media-based community focused on providing sexual and reproductive health information for the youth.

“I shared the mission of Tabu ID at the conference, which aims to build a society whose citizens are open and well-educated on sexual and reproductive health [SRH]. We want to break the stigma surrounding SRH,” the program’s cofounder said.

Part of Tabu ID’s aims are to raise awareness among young people on the importance of their physical and mental health and wellbeing in the context of the SRH, which Neira says has always been misleadingly associated with sex education.

“Since February 2018, we have provided comprehensive SRH education to Indonesian youth through daily posts on our Instagram account. We have nearly 18k [18,000] followers, with total weekly impressions reaching 300k,” she said proudly. Tabu ID also works with communities and schools to provide SHR education, she added.

Anggraini and Neira are just two of 35 participants from various youth organizations, which includes the UNFPA Youth Advisory Panel, the Independent Youth Alliance, Aliansi Satu Visi and Kisara from the Indonesian Planned Parenthood Association’s Bali and Semarang chapters.

Other civil society groups also took part in the conference, presenting best practices in Indonesian family planning.

Fitri Putjuk, the Indonesia country director for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs (JHCCP), said conference-goers were eager to learn about Indonesia’s best practices in the sector, including the so-called Kampung KB, or family planning village. The JHCCP has supported Indonesian family planning since l987.

Inne Sylvianne, the executive director of Yayasan Cipta, a partner of JHCCP and Family Planning 2020, added:

“We shared our best practices — the Advanced Family Planning advocacy efforts — that brings together governments, the private sector, professional organizations, community and religious leaders — even the military and police — to jointly implement family planning in Indonesia.”

Almost 4,000 participants gathered at the recently concluded ICFP this week in search of best practices for family planning, but Indonesia was not officially represented despite being the host of the conference in 2016.

Eddy Hasmi, a population expert and former director for population education at the National Population and Family Planning Board (BKKBN), said Indonesia had many best practices to share at the conference. “BKKBN officials would have been able to show to the world our family planning success stories if they were present here,” Eddy quipped.

Siswanto Agus Wilopo, a professor of reproductive health at Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, went further, saying that the absence of Indonesian officials at the ICFP was a disappointment.

“[While] this is not a legally-binding conference, Indonesia has been a leader in global family planning since the groundbreaking International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994,” Siswanto said.

“Being absent at this conference is both a national and international disappointment, if not an embarrassment.”