The New Landscape of Fertility and Family Planning 30 Years After Cairo and Beijing

In 1994, the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo, ushered in a paradigm shift that would reshape how governments formulate and implement population policies. While recognizing the advantages of population stabilization for sustainable development, the ICPD Programme of Action, adopted by 179 United Nations Member States, affirmed that national policies pertaining to population and development must have at their core a fundamental respect for human rights. The following year in 1995, at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, 189 countries adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Within their broad scopes, the Cairo Programme of Action and the Beijing Platform for Action emphasized the importance of family planning for fulfilling the basic right of individuals and couples to decide the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to achieve the highest attainable standard of sexual and reproductive health. The two documents highlighted that ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services, including for family planning, information and education, is critical for protecting the rights and futures of girls and women. Within the broad picture of progress and stalls in sexual and reproductive health, this policy brief will examine in more depth the changes in adolescent birth rates and family planning in the context of global fertility decline over the last 30 years. It will highlight inequalities in those changes and discuss the challenges of living up to the commitments made at Cairo and Beijing moving forward.