Youth Family Planning (FP) services is among health services that have been trivialized in certain developed and developing countries. The fundamental right of a human being is to decide freely on where to access certain services regarding their reproductive health, and studies have shown that adolescents and youths still don’t have access to FP services.
According to the United Nations (UN), adolescents and youths are known to constitute the majority of the world’s population; roughly one-quarter of the world’s population, 1.8 billion people between 10 and 24 years of age.
Among the many active adolescents/young people worldwide, large numbers want to avoid, delay or limit pregnancy but lack the knowledge, agency or resources to make decisions regarding their reproduction.
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Research has revealed that on average, unmet need for contraception is greater among unmarried adolescents/young people than those who are married, however married adolescents’ ages 15 -19 experience a higher percentage of unmet need than all married women. Still, socio-cultural and structural barriers often prevent adolescents/young people from achieving their reproductive desires, which can result in unintended pregnancies and other unhealthy outcomes.
It is evident that in a bid to address the raising concern of adolescents pregnancies, high rates of youths being infected with HIV/Sexual Transmitted Infections (STIs), and reproductive disorders as a result of induced abortion, governments around the world have and are still making great strides in creating policies that support young people’s health and human rights, especially their sexual and reproductive health rights.
Statements by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), World Health Organization (WHO), and others have underscored the urgency for international organizations and governments to ensure that all young people have informed choice and full access to contraceptives.
In order to address limited evidence based on the systematic assessment and mapping of key policies and programs that governs young people’s ability to access FP information, services and commodities, Population Reference Bureau (PRB) developed and annually updates a Youth Family Planning Policy Scorecard.
The purpose of the scorecard is to assess the extent to which a country’s policy environment enables and supports youth access to and the use of FP by promoting evidence-based practices based on the selected eight indicators which are parental and spousal consent, provider authorization, restrictions based on age, access to a full range of FP method amongst others.
The evidence base of the scorecard was achieved through a conducted literature review by of 44 studies and systematic reviews by PRB staff on youth sexual and reproductive health published between 2000 and 2016. Also, four color-coded categories were devised to classify the level of a country’s performance for each indicator.
Green which indicates strong policy environment, Yellow shows a promising policy environment but room for improvement.
Red on the other hand shows that policy environment impedes youth from accessing and using contraception while gray shows that policy addressing the indicator does not exist
Basically, the scorecard enlightens about countries policy language on youth access to contraception and this assessment is done for 28 countries, with Nigeria inclusive.
