Family Planning

This toolkit was developed as a companion to the Inter-Agency Field Manual on Reproductive Health in Refugee Settings to help humanitarian program managers and healthcare providers meet the sexual and reproductive health needs of adolescents when an emergency strikes, and to ensure that service providers and program managers have the right resources to make programs acceptable, accessible and appropriate for adolescents in emergency situations. It includes user-friendly tools for assessing adolescent needs, fostering participation with communities and parents, and identifying reproductive health entry points in existing adolescent programs.

The RHRC Consortium is working to mainstream EC by increasing awareness and knowledge of EC and improving access to and demand for EC in appropriate program locations.

The brochure version of the module can be downloaded in English (updated in October 2008; optional cover here), French (updated in October 2008; optional cover here), Spanish, Portuguese, Pashto, and Burmese.

This is a brief overview of key messages, facts and resources on family planning.

In collaboration with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the Women's Refugee Commission undertook a five-country (Jordan, Djibouti, Uganda, Malaysia, Kenya) baseline assessment on family planning to document knowledge, beliefs, perceptions and practices of refugees, as well as the state of service provision.

The purposes of this report are to improve member agencies' capacity to design and conduct good quality research studies and use research findings to improve service programs; to understand the reproductive health needs and concerns of the refugee population; and to share and disseminate findings with a broad national and international audience.

Appendices are available in separate PDF file here.

Family planning enables couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children. This is achieved through access to information and contraceptive methods that include short-term, long-term and permanent methods. A woman's ability to space and limit her pregnancies has a direct impact on her health and well-being and on the outcome of each pregnancy, as well as on broader global commitments, such as the Millennium Development Goals.

The 2010 Inter-agency Field Manual on Reproductive Health in Humanitarian Settings is an update of the 1999 Reproductive Health in Refugee Situations: An Inter-agency Field Manual, the authoritative guidance on reproductive health interventions in humanitarian settings.

The document is available chapter-by-chapter and as a single zip file by following the link above, as well as Arabic, Bahasa, Dari, French and Spanish translations, corrections, details of regional launches and hard copy ordering.

This case study highlights the mid-project impact of CAREs three-year Family Planning Project (FPP) in remote, war-torn Maniema province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The goal of the FPP is to reduce unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. After just 20 months of work with the Ministry of Health and civic organizations, the FPP shows an increase in the contraceptive prevalence rate from 1% to 9%, as well as other clear, positive results. This case study explores the FPP mid-project results and lessons learned on addressing family planning as an urgent need and integrating reproductive health care services as part of first tier-interventions implemented by health delivery systems during times of crisis and post-crisis.

This document summarizes the importance of implementing the MISP at the onset of every emergency, as advocacy messages for policy makers.

This article provides an overview of measures taken to meet refugees reproductive health needs and underlines the gaps that still need to be filled.

From May to August 2011, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Women's Refugee Commission, with technical assistance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), undertook a multi-country baseline study to document knowledge of family planning, beliefs and practices of refugees, as well as the state of service provision in select refugee settings in Djibouti, Jordan, Kenya, Malaysia and Uganda. Click here to access baseline and beneficiary reports for each individual country.The goal of the baseline study was to support program planning, and subsequently increase family planning uptake among women, men and adolescents.

Report of an Inter-agency Global Evaluation 2004, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, November 2004. This report highlights the status of reproductive health services for refugees and internally displaced persons, identifies gaps in these services, and outlines the way forward with respect to strengthening and/or expanding services. In addition to the report and its appendices, there is a brief synopsis, web film, and PowerPoint presentations.

This page features a summary of the proceedings, a book of abstracts, and select presentations from the RHRC Consortium Conference held in Brussels, Belgium, October 7-8, 2003.

This page features the proceedings of the RHRC Conference 'Findings On Reproductive Health Of Refugees And Displaced Populations', held in Washington DC, December 5-6, 2000.

USAID undertook this study in Sierra Leone in 2007 to: Explore refugee/IDP family planning needs before, during, and after conflict; Determine the root causes of the barriers to quality, accessible services; Build capacity of local groups to analyze operational barriers to services; and Devise policy actions and recommendations for overcoming barriersthat are applicable both in-country and in other conflict-affected countries.

Reproductive health (RH) assessment among the conflict-affected populations of north- ern Uganda in February 2007. The assessment team visited the districts of Kitgum and Pader and also visited a youth center and clinic in Gulu. In general, the findings revealed that although some basic services were in place, many were sorely lacking.