INTRODUCTION

To accelerate progress, we are shifting how we work

UNFPA recognizes the scale of the challenge — the need, opportunity and responsibility to expand choices and ensure rights amid this evolving landscape. Through the new strategy, UNFPA is reframing its approach towards meeting family planning needs in the current decade. Drawing on lessons learned in recent years, the strategy will shift UNFPA’s work in key ways to drive progress towards 2030: 

• Building decisive leadership for family planning as the foundation of sexual and reproductive health and rights. This vision goes beyond contraception to encompass a range of sexual and reproductive health issues — including infertility — as well as moving beyond a health sector response to transforming social norms, and enacting laws and policies to enable all individuals to realize their reproductive intentions.

• Breaking down silos to integrate family planning across all that UNFPA does. Repositioning family planning as a foundation of health, development, peace and economic growth, through innovation, use of evidence-based high-impact practices, and responding to emerging needs. 

• Fostering a shift from the reliance of countries on external funding to sustainable financing, including supporting countries to invest domestic resources.

Through the UNFPA Strategy for Family Planning, 2022—2030, UNFPA is intentionally and meaningfully shifting its technical approach at all levels to elevate its global leadership in family planning to meet the challenges ahead. The strategy establishes the roadmap with principles, strategic priorities and organizational shifts. It will be complemented by a series of roundtable policy convenings over the coming years to amplify emerging issues and keep current on new evidence-based promising practices. This Acceleration Plan provides the practical actions needed to ensure the realization of the family planning strategy. 

Elements of the family planning strategy

• UNFPA Strategy for Family Planning, 2022–2030

• UNFPA Acceleration Plan for Ending the Unmet Need for Family Planning, 2022–2025

• Roundtable policy convenings, webinars and workshop sessions

• Technical briefs and other guidance materials on programmatic and policy actions

The strategy identifies eight strategic priorities, which are based on an assessment of progress and persistent barriers, and rooted in the UNFPA mandate, role and core principles: deepen integration, increase sustainability, improve quality, expand the availability and access, enhance agency and address discrimination, strengthen and disaggregate data, build resilience and improve adaptation, engage adolescents and youth. These strategic priorities are activated in the priority actions and programmatic options of the Acceleration Plan. 

Objectives of the acceleration plan

The UNFPA Acceleration Plan for Ending the Unmet Need for Family Planning is an internal guidance document that has been informed by both the most up-to-date reference materials and tools, as well as inputs from you, your colleagues, and the experts at UNFPA dedicated to accelerating progress on family planning collectively. It has several objectives: 

• To provide UNFPA country and regional offices with a needs-based model and a menu of evidence-based priority actions and programmatic options that advance human rights and gender equality

• To tailor action to specific contexts in ways that are effective and responsive to the family planning landscape and available resources 

• To trigger immediate action to accelerate progress towards implementing the UNFPA Strategy for Family Planning, 2022–2030 in the years remaining in the UNFPA Strategic Plan, 2022–2025 

• To support Country Programme Documents, integrated programmes for sexual and reproductive health and rights, and the TA applications of the UNFPA Supplies Partnership

Acceleration of the family planning strategy will be a gradual process, but strategic actions can propel progress. Implementing the priority actions will require alignment with existing UNFPA processes, principles and strategic lines. This work will apply human rights-based and gender-transformative approaches and the principle of leaving no one behind and reaching the furthest behind. It will position family planning as a priority for development. 

How was the acceleration plan developed?

The acceleration plan was developed to accelerate progress as presented in the UNFPA family planning strategy. It was developed in response to demand from external and internal stakeholders, including global family planning partners keen to understand and align with the UNFPA vision. It was developed in a consultative and participatory manner, with the engagement of UNFPA staff from global, regional and country offices. Output Working Groups composed of UNFPA staff and partners with expertise in key areas met regularly over several months to both adapt the broader outputs to family planning, ensuring alignment to the broader strategic plan, while giving emphasis and direction on how they apply to family planning programming. Development of this plan also included its elaboration and validations at a UNFPA technical meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa in December 2022.  A list of acknowledgements only begins to recognize the contributions of many family planning champions. 

Who is it for?

The Acceleration Plan is an internal resource for use by all UNFPA staff involved in family planning programme design and implementation and preparation of the Country Programme Document.

What is the purpose of each section?

The document is a resource that does not require reading from the beginning to the end. Working through the elements of the document will assist in understanding where the specific challenges are, and identifying the priority actions that need to be in place and the programmatic options available to address those challenges. Finally, some considerations are offered for reflection as we revise approaches in order to accelerate family planning. 

1. ASSESSMENT: Understanding the country context. The most effective way to accelerate progress in family planning is to take a differentiated approach to programming based on the contextual needs of population groups. The first section of the Acceleration Plan focuses on assessing and understanding the country context at national level by providing tools developed by UNFPA to characterize the needs. It encourages staff to use recent data and the best evidence available to position the country in one or more context categories, and links to a checklist to help staff identify key needs and/or areas for action. The context assessment, and a critical review of current approaches being implemented, will provide the positioning to recognize gaps. They will also help staff as they consider the need to shift or expand approaches, including where UNFPA staff at country and regional offices should take the lead versus where collaboration and partnership will be sought.

2. ACCELERATION: Priority actions and programmatic options. The second section unpacks the eight strategic priorities of the UNFPA Strategy for Family Planning into concrete recommendations. The Acceleration section specifies priority actions and provides a range of programmatic options to choose from. UNFPA staff at country and regional offices may select from the actions and options based on the context and family planning situation in the country. The programmatic options are drawn from evidence-based and promising practices, including High-Impact Practices, and are organized within a searchable menu tool with filter fields. 

3. CONSIDERATIONS: Factors in selecting programmatic options. The third section considers issues of capacity and skills, financing, partnership and risk. Such factors can facilitate or hinder the implementation of priority actions for successful family planning programmes at the country level. Through this section, staff are encouraged to review the status of their institutional capacity and the capacities of partners, the financing available or that can be increased, and to use existing tools and guidance materials to create a conducive environment for successful family planning programming.

4. ACCOUNTABILITY: Measuring progress, documenting success. Strong measurement needs to be built out from the design phase, not only for impact but for accountability purposes. The UNFPA strategic plan’s integrated results and resources framework, the UNFPA Data Portal, and other global measurement frameworks provide indicators against which family planning programming can and should be measured. This section provides complimentary direction on which indicators from existing frameworks can be used to measure the priority actions recommended in this Acceleration Plan to improve programming and measure progress and success. Use these indicators as examples of how to strengthen the measurement of priority actions and programmatic options.

5. RESOURCES: Tools and references. This section provides a comprehensive list of tools to guide programme design, intervention areas, capacity building, financing, and monitoring and evaluation. It includes resources from within UNFPA and beyond the organization. These tools have been developed to support programming, both generally and on specific topics. They are available and should be used to improve the assessment, implementation and measurement of UNFPA family planning programming.

The six interconnected outputs of the UNFPA Strategic Plan, 2022–2025 include: (a) policy and accountability; (b) quality of care and services; (c) gender and social norms; (d) population change and data; (e) humanitarian action; and (f) adolescents and youth. These outputs have been adapted to the specific challenges of ending the unmet need for family planning and are presented here as Acceleration Plan Outputs. This Acceleration Plan has a three-year time frame that aligns with the current strategic plan.

More details about the alignment of the outputs are provided in the Accountability section, along with suggested indicators to measure progress.