World Population Day

The United Nations observance of World Population Day (July 11, 2019) this year calls for global attention to the unfinished business of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo in 1994. In the 25 years since 179 governments recognized that reproductive health and gender equality are essential for achieving sustainable development, the field has taken on new and expanded themes that are central to achieving this equity.

MEASURE Evaluation, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), pioneered a family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) indicators database in 2002, partially as a result of the Cairo conference and now has updated this much-used resource to reflect new realities. The original database emphasized quality of life, gender equity, and human rights. The latter update (2019) added indicators in areas such as male circumcision, cervical cancer, and private sector involvement in family planning. The database recognizes that, in addition to family planning, the field must embrace safe motherhood, HIV and AIDS, women's nutrition, breastfeeding, post abortion care, prevention of female genital cutting, and other topics related to women’s and family health.

A second important trend since the Cairo conference has been increased emphasis on accountability from countries and international donor agencies. Program evaluations are seen as a way to measure progress and adapt programs that aren’t performing. These evaluations require clear indicators to underpin more systematic methods to track progress and to measure results.

The database is organized in three parts—an overview and objectives section that discusses basic concepts in program evaluation; crosscutting indicators relevant across the wide programmatic area FP/RH; and specific programmatic area indicators expressly for core FP/RH areas. Each indicator includes the definition, data requirements, data sources, purpose, issues and—if relevant--gender implications. Audiences who will find the database most useful are program administrators and managers, evaluators who monitor performance, and social science researchers and students. For instance, in June alone the database was consulted more than 37,000 times.

Explore the database here.

For more information about MEASURE Evaluation, please visit www.measureevaluation.org