Voluntary Family Planning Programmes That Respect, Protect, and Fulfil Human Rights

This study seeks to "fully understand what a voluntary, rights-based Family Planning (FP) programme should include and how to effectively implement it…" and to "clearly illustrate how voluntarism and human rights can be mutually reinforcing in FP programmes." The paper reviews available tools for use by programme planners and managers to assess, design, implement, and evaluate FP programmes in line with a rights-based FP conceptual framework, which:

• Describes key FP programme elements in terms of rights, incorporating public health and human rights principles;
• Offers a practical approach to operationalising reproductive rights in the development, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of voluntary FP programmes;
• Links programme actions, inputs, and activities in public health and human rights outcomes and impact;
• Highlights how countries can invest in and make further progress toward the realisation of rights as an inherent part of supporting comprehensive, high-quality FP programming.

The RESPOND Project research team sorted the resources into five categories: cross-cutting, policy-focused, service-focused, community-focused, and individual-focused. They then grouped the resources into type: Training Tool (a capacity-building resource that enables users to impart knowledge and/or skills to others), Assessment (a resource that enables users to conduct programmatic assessments or to develop and use indicators or methodologies to track elements, progress, or results of programmes), Framework (or conceptual model), Methodology (or process, such as for quality improvement), Implementation (resources such as manuals or handbooks that provide direction for how to carry out a programme or programme component), and Job Aid (geared to assist health providers to implement a specific task).

The report includes links to more than 350 tools, each reviewed and categorised. Below are some examples as described by RESPOND:

Cross-cutting: Transforming Health Systems: Gender and Rights in Reproductive Health - A Training Curriculum for Health Managers. This manual is a training resource for trainers for a 3-week course designed to equip participants with analytical tools and skills to operationalise reproductive health (RH) policies and programmes as envisioned in the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Programme of Action and based on human rights norms and standards. The manual offers a session- and case-based curriculum on how to promote gender equity and reproductive rights. It is intended for health managers, planners, policymakers, health activists, and others with RH responsibilities; and academic and activist trainers offering courses in research and programming health, as well as in gender.

Policy: Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) and Human Rights: A Tool for Examining Laws, Regulations, and Policies. This SRH and human rights tool allows country stakeholders to use a human rights framework to examine the legal, policy, and regulatory environment; identify barriers and gaps; and make recommendations to support an enabling environment that fosters the enjoyment of rights and supports sSRHh.

Service: Rethinking Differences and Rights in Sexual and Reproductive Health: A Training Manual for Healthcare Providers (Module 3: Quality Care I: Quality in Human Relation and Technical Quality. This training package, originally developed for Bolivia, promotes gender-sensitive, high-quality care in SRH services, with the goal of contributing to sustained improvements in health. A gender perspective is applied to help participants better understand diversity and to respond to differentiated groups of users and dynamics between them.

Community: Mobilising Communities on Young People's Health and Rights: An Advocacy Toolkit for Programme Managers and an Advocacy Training Guide. This toolkit is designed to assist programme planners and managers to design, conduct, and evaluate advocacy campaigns to advance the implementation of existing policies, with a specific focus on young people's sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). It is intended for use with community-based organisations, youth groups, and other grassroots partners interested in improving access to SRHR information and services for youth.

Individual: Working with Young Women: Empowerment, Rights, and Health. This tool provides educators, volunteers, teachers, and others a series of group educational activities to promote awareness about gender inequities, rights, and health among young women ages 15-24 years and to develop their skills so that they can feel more capable of acting in empowered ways in different spheres of their lives.

The authors note that 29% of the tools reviewed had an explicit focus on human rights. Others, while not designed to protect and fulfil rights, did contain elements that support rights. Interestingly, the tools that have an explicit focus on rights came up in searches of materials from more recent years, which may indicate a rising tendency to develop such tools for programming. They conclude with some recommendations for future development of FP tools with a rights focus.