CONFERENCE

Persisting unmet need for family planning can undermine the achievement of all Millennium Development Goals and compromise global efforts towards human development. Although more than 500 million couples in the developing world are satisfied family planning users, another 200 million seek to delay or avoid having a birth but are not using contraception. The United Nations estimates that by 2050 this demand will grow by 40 percent as record numbers of young people enter the prime reproductive ages. In some African countries, the level of unmet need for family planning exceeds the level of contraceptive use.