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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the budget of the Indian family planning programme from a human rights perspective. Family planning services play an important role in the realisation of the reproductive rights of women. In India, the family planning programme is one of the largest in the world with thousands of patients, mostly women, accessing services every year. Although the Indian legal system guarantees the right to health, Indian women from marginalised sections of society still battle inadequate services and the absence of health care that respects their right to reproductive autonomy and choice. Therefore, the question is: in the presence of a strong legal framework, what are the factors that contribute to this phenomenon?

The authors have gathered data from the project implementation plans at the state level comparing year-wise expenditure for family planning against overall expenditure for reproductive, maternal and child health expenditure. The data are then compared to the number of women using sterilisation to suggest a relationship between both. Finally, the article relies on desk research to review scholarship on the Indian family planning programme and applicable human rights obligations.

The paper finds that social-economic rights such as the right to health are applicable to government spending and budgeting. It also finds current spending in the NHM is insufficient to guarantee women’s reproductive rights as the vast majority of resources are spend on sterilisation, thus limiting women’s ability to choose the number and spacing of children.

The data used in this research bears one limitation: the propensity of the government to change the guidelines as to how States should present their budgets in the project implementation plans. The authors have adjusted the data so that it remains comparable. However, the adjustment was not possible for all expenditure data, which is why the current study is limited to the family planning programme alone.

The paper argues that to be human rights compliant, health budgets of the NHM need to be geared towards the specific needs of women in terms of family planning. Finally, the article briefly outlines the role played by human rights and human rights litigation in impacting government budgets.

India’s family planning programme has been examined from a performance and medical standpoint, focussing on medical indicators such as total fertility rate, unmet needs for family planning, amongst others. Academic scholarship has investigated through statistical analysis patterns of contraceptive use and contraceptive mix. What is absent, however, is an assessment of the programme from a right-based perspective by looking at the human rights obligations of India and their normative implications for the Indian family programme.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the situation of accessibility to reproductive health rights, and the conditional factors of accessibility to such rights of adolescents.

A qualitative method was used to extract information from 80 informants. Data were collected through in-depth interview, focus group discussion, observation, data recording, audio recording and the review of related documents during August to October 2016.

Adolescents had not accessed to their right on informing of their decision making; information and education; health; confidentiality and privacy; and treating with equity and no discrimination. Also, the conditional factors influenced to the accessibility on such rights were lacking of knowledge on reproductive health and negative attitude toward this matter among the people concerned. There were still no regulations or policies on the performance of authority agencies and the factors on social dimensions, traditions, customs, sexual culture and religion.

The findings from this study would be a help to promote the accessibility for adolescents to reproductive health rights under the Prevention and Solution of Adolescent Pregnancy Problem Act, B.E. 2559 (2016) specific on standard criteria reproductive health services from hospitals and the involvement from Ministry of Education for the development of sex life skill and reproductive health for the teacher.

Using data from a multi-method study with a national reproductive justice coalition, this chapter examines the emergence of the US reproductive justice movement. I first examine how reproductive justice emerged in relation to the mainstream women's movements. Then I demonstrate how, due to the relationship between reproductive justice and social identity, the boundaries of the reproductive frame and movements are simultaneously broader and more constrained in meaning than reproductive rights. Finally, I show how (perceived) co-optation leads to tensions between movement sectors and weakens the potential for reproductive justice to reinvigorate activism around reproductive issues. I conclude with how the success of the reproductive justice movement, including around diversity and coalition building, can inform other social movements.

I begin my historical analysis of the co-evolution of reproductive norms and desires, approaches to fertility control, and the meaning assigned to contraceptives with an examination of the Grafenberg Ring, the first modern IUD. The Grafenberg ring, developed in the late 1920s by a German doctor, Ernst Gräfenberg, was a small ring made of silkworm gut and coiled silver that can be compressed to be inserted into the uterus. The Grafenberg ring appeared at a time when changes in social attitude towards sexuality had formed a favorable climate for a new contraceptive method. The device was greeted with much interest from the European birth control movement, and Gräfenberg was invited to speak at the Third Congress of the World League for Sexual Reform held in London in 1929 and at the Seventh International Birth Control Conference in Zurich in 1930 (Davis, 1971).

The internally displaced persons (IDPs) are often overlooked population, falling between the cracks of international and national commitments. Displaced women and children go through more hardship than the male counterpart, as they are frequently at greater risk and do not get adequate access to the reproductive healthcare rights; they suffer from poor health amid threats of eviction. The purpose of this paper is to look into the IDPs reproductive healthcare situation in India and sustainable development goal (SDG) role in addressing the reproductive healthcare rights of the IDPs in India.

This paper is based on the available literature on reproductive rights of IDPs in India, analysis of the SDGs 3 and other legal safeguards.

The newly arrived IDPs in the camps have complex needs and health problems. They are susceptible to a number of health problems due to the exposure to physical and environmental threats, violence and trauma. Many of them face a loss of social networks and assets, knowledge and information in the new environment, and lack food security. They have inadequate shelter, healthcare services, sanitation and access to safe water.

This is a viewpoint paper and most of the information in this paper are taken from different sources which are cited in the reference section. There is a lack of sufficient data on IDPs in India. Most of the IDPs figures/data are quoted from Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and other literature.

To achieve the SDGs by 2030, India needs to take account of all people’s vulnerabilities to address their humanitarian and sustainable development needs. It is important that the development, humanitarian actors, along with the local communities, work collectively to respond to the health needs of the IDPs. Moreover, the active role of the government can provide the necessary assistance to guarantee the rights of IDPs health, adequate standard of living and to social security.

This paper highlights the reproductive healthcare rights of the IDPs in India and the challenges faced by them. It has analyzed the policy gaps. The paper also suggests few measures that can be undertaken to address those challenges under the SDGs.

Indonesia subscribes to rights-based principles of family planning. However, a chasm between principles and practice has long been noted on a global basis, and progress has not been well-documented. This paper aims to assess the extent to which the Indonesian national family planning program has evolved in a manner that is consistent with rights-based principles.

The primary source of data was five Indonesian Demographic Health Surveys undertaken from 1997 to 2017. The analyses were organized around three major categories of family planning-related human rights. Trend analysis and logistic regression were used in analyzing the data.

Indonesian women have considerable autonomy in family planning decision, reporting that family planning decisions were mainly made by themselves or jointly with their spouse. Although contraceptive method awareness and demand for family planning are high, Indonesia fares poorly with regard to informed choice in contraceptive method selection. Access to family planning services is comparatively high as judged by contraceptive prevalence, family planning demand satisfaction and unmet need for family planning. However, significant geographic and socioeconomic inequity were observed on many indicators, with eastern Indonesian provinces consistently lagging behind.

This paper focuses on married couple, as Indonesia has a restrictive policy to limiting access and information of family planning for other groups, unmarried youth in particular.

This paper makes an important contribution to document how effectively the prohuman rights policy orientation toward family planning has been translated into services.

This paper aims to highlight the role of the United Nations in the formulation and implementation of the current understanding of “population assistance” and examine some of the arguments for “population assistance” in the form of reproductive health care.

It presents the data for global population assistance and briefly compares these figures with data for other developmental sectors, recommending certain policy changes if real development is to be achieved.

During the last decade increasingly large amounts of money have been spent on limiting population growth of underdeveloped countries. Population control is seen as the corner‐stone of development and population activities. Thus, population control has become “population assistance,” and birth control has become “reproductive health services.” Population control is pursued at the expense of women's rights and to the detriment of real economic growth and social improvement.

For more than two decades, John Conway O'Brien has written on the importance of ethics for economic growth. In a recent article, he concluded that “although the illuminated may have been activated by the most altruistic of motives, their search for the good society was doomed from the start.” This paper attests the validity of his remarks.

The central objective of this chapter is to develop a theoretical reading of the international and contemporary discourse of reproductive rights. My hope is that the perspective and analytical proposal set forth represent a contribution to the expansion and consolidation of the field of study, and renders useful for the analysis and evaluation of the situation of reproductive rights within national contexts.

This chapter discusses various aspects of family planning initiatives on a global scale, with a specific focus on their influence in Asian contexts, including Bangladesh. This chapter examines the diverse range of family planning programs and policies implemented worldwide, in Asia and Bangladesh considering cultural factors that significantly shape family planning decisions. By highlighting the unique approaches and challenges faced in different regions, it provides valuable insights into the evolving landscape of family planning efforts and their impact on population dynamics.

This paper aims to suggest that gender inequality plays a significant role in explaining the prevailing magnitudes of food insecurity in the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. It provides empirical evidence for the underlying hypothesis that removing discrimination against women, particularly, with respect to their reproductive health and rights, depicted in high adolescent fertility rates and maternal deaths, will be an important pre-condition for addressing the hunger and undernourishment challenge in the region. A theoretical linkage has been conceptualised and supported through findings from panel data analysis of a set of 20 countries in the region, over a period of 16 years (from 1999 to 2015). The key result is that the relative impact of health inequality on food insecurity is higher and significant, in comparison to disparities in education and economic participation of women. A unit increase in adolescent fertility rate leads to an increase in undernourishment by 19.4 per cent, depth of food deficit by 1.15 per cent and a decline in average dietary energy adequacy by 0.21 per cent.

In the paper, time series data set for 20 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa is generated by using world development indicators (World Bank) of gender inequality and food security statistics of Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Data set involves trends in variables over a period of 16 years (1999 to 2015). A panel regression analysis with fixed effects is undertaken for testing the underlying hypothesis. To capture the linkage in a detailed manner, the author has fitted four models for each of the three measures of food security. First model captures the specific impact of gender differences in secondary school enrolment on food security in the region. Second model assesses the impact of gender inequality in labour force participation, and the third model explores the impact of health inequality in terms of adolescent fertility and maternal mortality on food security indicators. In the final model, the relative impact of all the four gender inequality indicators on magnitude of food insecurity in the study region is assessed.

The findings from panel data analysis provide empirical support to our hypothesis that gender disparities prevailing in Sub-Saharan Africa have an adverse impact on the level of food security in the region. Individually, increase in both, gender parity in secondary education and ratio of female to male labour force participation rate, has a negative influence on prevalence of undernourishment and depth of food deficit in the region. But, when the relative impact of gender inequality in education, economic participation and health are considered together in a single model, adolescent fertility rate, followed by maternal mortality ratio became the two most important indicators negatively influencing the magnitude of food security in SSA. A unit increase in adolescent fertility rate, leads to an increase in undernourishment by 19.4 per cent, depth of food deficit by 1.15 per cent and a decline in average dietary energy adequacy by 0.21 per cent.

Scarcity of continuous time series data for the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa limits the scope of analysis.

Government policies and programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa must focus on successful implementation of sexual and reproductive health and rights of women, as underlined in Goal 3 of sustainable development goals (SDGs). This would require deeper levels of interventions aimed at transforming gender roles and relations through involvement of men and boys as partners. Elimination of sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls, and ensuring easy and affordable access to sexual and reproductive health services, particularly in fragile and conflict affected areas, are some of the important measures which may facilitate movement of the countries in the region, towards the target set by SDG 3.

Indisputably, women play a key role in a nation’s food economy, not only as food producers and income earners but also as food distributors and consumers. Nevertheless, they face discrimination in every dimension and phase of life, which hampers their ability to successfully fulfill this responsibility. The paper provides a theoretical linkage and empirical evidence on the underlying hypothesis that targeting various forms of gender disparities in the African sub-continent, particularly those relating to reproductive health and rights of women will pave the way for reducing the magnitude of hunger and food insecurity in the region of Sub-Saharan Africa. Few papers in my knowledge have explored the linkage between gender inequality and food insecurity, but none have empirically emphasised the reproductive health dimension of this association.