Tucked under Goal 3 of the recently agreed Sustainable Development Goals that focuses on ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all is a target to provide universal access to sexual and reproductive health care services, including family planning, by 2030.
But despite the optimism that this target can be achieved — partly due to the relative progress achieved under the Millennium Development Goals since 2000 — global development leaders are quick to admit that the momentum towards achieving these targets may be halted if one perennial issue is not addressed: funding.
Karl Hofmann, president and CEO of Population Services International, shared on the sidelines of the fourth International Conference on Family Planning in Nusa Dua, Indonesia, this week that while international agreements — including the SDGs and the Family Planning 2020 global partnership launched in London in 2012 — have provided a credible blueprint for development stakeholders to follow in addressing family planning issues, much of the good work will be in vain if robust resources are not allocated to operationalize them.