Unmet need for contraception remains high in many settings, and is highest among the most vulnerable in society: adolescents, the poor, those living in rural areas and urban slums, people living with HIV and internally displaced people.
The latest estimates are that million women have an unmet need for modern contraception, and the need is greatest where the risks of maternal mortality are highest. International and regional human rights treaties, national constitutions and laws provide guarantees specifically relating to access to contraceptive information and services. In addition, over the past few decades, international, regional and national legislative and human rights bodies have increasingly applied human rights to contraceptive information and services.
They recommend, among other actions, that states should ensure timely and affordable access to good quality sexual and reproductive health information and services, including contraception, which should be delivered in a way that ensures fully informed decision-making, respects dignity, autonomy, privacy and confidentiality, and is sensitive to individual's needs and perspectives. In order to accelerate progress towards attainment of international development goals and targets in sexual and reproductive health, and in particular to contribute to meeting unmet need for contraceptive information and services, the World Health Organization WHO has developed guidelines and recommendations on ensuring human rights in the provision of contraceptive information and services.
The presentation will provide an overview of the process used to develop the guidelines and recommendations made by WHO for policy-makers, managers, providers and other stakeholders in the health sector on some of the priority actions needed to ensure that different human rights dimensions are systematically and clearly integrated into the provision of contraceptive information and services.
New contraceptive methods have been developed to meet the objectives of expanding contraceptive choices for both women and men and answering an unmet need for contraceptives with a long-term action that meet the expectations of consumers. Simplicity, reversibility and effectiveness are the desired features of a male contraceptive, but no new male contraceptive method is yet available. In comparison to female methods, the two existing male methods, condom and vasectomy, appear limited and are not always well accepted.
