Today is World Population Day. This year’s theme is Family Planning: Empowering People, Developing Nations.
The first World Population Day was marked in 1990. At the time, the global population stood at a little over 5 billion. Now it stands at 7.6 billion.
According to UN.org, around the world, some 225 million women who want to avoid pregnancy are not using safe and effective family planning methods. Reasons range from lack of access to information or services to lack of support from their partners or communities. Most of these women with an unmet demand for contraceptives live in 69 of the poorest countries on earth.
This year, the day coincides with the Family Planning Summit, the second meeting of the FP2020–Family Planning 2020–initiative, which aims to expand access to voluntary family planning to 120 million additional women by 2020.
On Twitter, the trending hashtag #HerFuture had some great insights from different partners who weighed in on the importance of family planning.
These are our top five:
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