International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) 2022

The Women’s Refugee Commission, the Inter-Agency Working Group on Reproductive Health in Crises (IAWG), and FP2030 developed targeted recommendations to advance access to contraceptive services for people affected by crises.

The Women’s Refugee Commission developed the Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child, Adolescent Health and Nutrition Project, with its cornerstone component, the Village Health Worker Program, in Borno State, northeast Nigeria.

The Women’s Refugee Commission and partners conducted participatory research with older people and people with disabilities to learn more about their priorities for emergency preparedness and sexual and reproductive healthcare.

The Women’s Refugee Commission conducted an endline evaluation to gather information on the effects of the Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child, and Adolescent Health and Nutrition Project among households.

The Women’s Refugee Commission completed a landscaping assessment from 2018–2020 to evaluate and build the evidence base on barriers, opportunities, and effective strategies to provide contraceptive services to women and girls affected by crises.

The Women’s Refugee Commission undertook a landscaping assessment to evaluate and build the evidence base on barriers, opportunities, and effective strategies to provide the full range of contraceptives, including new contraceptive technologies, to women, girls, and couples affected by crises.

In 2020, the Women’s Refugee Commission documented the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on contraceptive service delivery, service delivery innovations and adaptations to continue providing contraception during the pandemic in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Borno State, Nigeria, and Cyclone Idai-affected Mozambique.

The Women’s Refugee Commission conducted a case study of contraceptive service delivery in Cyclone Idai-affected areas of Mozambique, which documented the important work that the government of Mozambique, its partner organizations, and other stakeholders were undertaking to provide contraceptive services and post-abortion care to affected communities.

This case study from the Women’s Refugee Commission is the first to focus specifically on contraceptive service delivery and post-abortion care in Borno State in Northeast Nigeria. It documents the important work that humanitarian actors, the government of Nigeria, and other stakeholders are undertaking to provide contraceptive services to internally displaced persons (IDPs) and host communities.

In January 2019, the Women’s Refugee Commission conducted a case study of contraceptive service delivery in the refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, home to almost one million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. The study aimed to document the important work that humanitarian actors and other stakeholders are undertaking to provide contraceptive services and menstrual regulation in the refugee camps; to highlight challenges; and to document how some of these challenges were overcome.

The Facilitator’s Kit: Community Preparedness for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Gender curriculum aims to build on existing capacity at the community level to identify, prepare for, and respond to risks and inequities faced by women, girls, and diverse community groups in emergencies, and includes community action planning. New tools include a set of community capacity and needs assessment tools to identify existing capacities and include diverse community groups in preparedness planning; and a half-day module on epidemic/pandemic preparedness. 

Access to contraception is an essential, lifesaving service in emergency settings. Contraceptive services must be made available along with other essential SRH services at the outset of every humanitarian response, including epidemics and pandemics, and expanded as the acute stage subsides. The Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) completed a landscaping assessment from 2018–2020 to evaluate and build the evidence base on barriers, opportunities, and effective strategies to provide contraceptive services to people affected by crises. This synopsis outlines our findings and recommendations.

When crises strike, local communities are the first to respond. For more than a decade, the Women’s Refugee Commission has focused on facilitating preparedness for crisis-prone communities. Inclusive community preparedness can help ensure that lifesaving sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services and supplies are available from the onset of an emergency, and mitigate the devastating consequences of crises, including increased risk of maternal and newborn deaths, sexual and gender-based violence, unintended pregnancy, unsafe abortions, and sexually transmitted infections. This synopsis describes our findings and recommendations on inclusive community preparedness.