Leadership group announced for the landmark Family Planning 2020 partnership to help provide an additional 120 million women and girls in the world’s poorest countries with access to voluntary family planning information, contraceptives and services.
NEW YORK: Eighteen leaders from civil society, governments, multi-lateral organizations, technical institutions and foundations are participating on the “Reference Group” for Family Planning 2020 (FP2020). The partnership was a key outcome of the London Summit on Family Planning convened by the UK Department for International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) on July 11, 2012. Read more...
On the day of the London Summit on Family Planning, I left the hall a little late. The seats were already stacked away, the stage was bare, the screens had gone, most of the delegates had departed, and the cleaners were sweeping up discarded order papers and agendas. It might have never happened. 
In June, at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or Rio+20, global leaders missed a historic opportunity to put reproductive health and family planning at the center of global sustainability and development. Today’s London Summit on Family Planning, hosted by the United Kingdom and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, succeeded where the Rio+20 conference fell short, by making clear the inextricable links between women, reproductive health, and poverty reduction. 
World leaders, international donors, government officials from developing countries and civil society organisations gathered at the 
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Around the world, frontline health workers are often the first link to lifesaving care and supplies, and in some cases they are the only link for families and communities in rural and impoverished areas. This is also where most of the world’s unmet need for family planning resides. More than 200 million women in developing countries want to delay or avoid pregnancy but lack access to modern methods of contraception.