Sri Lanka’s Human Development Index (HDI) value for 2013 was 0.750, positioning it at 73 out of 187 countries. This rate is above the average of 0.735 for countries in the high human development group and above the average of 0.588 for countries in South Asia (UNDP, 2014). Sri Lanka further shows impressive national health […]

Kyrgyz Republic is a comparatively young state with a very ancient and rich nomadic history and culture. It is essential to state from the very beginning two ongoing structural changes that impact the current development context and gender equality, and women’s rights, including sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in the country: the transition […]

Nepal is a land-locked country located at the foothills of the Himalayas. The country is bordered by India to the east, south, west, and China to the north. Nepal is rectangular in shape and stretches 885 kilometers in length (east to west) and 193 kilometers in width (north to south). The total land area of […]

Following the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994, Thailand put forward a Reproductive Health Policy in 1997, stating that “all Thai citizens, at all ages, must have [a] good reproductive life”. Nevertheless, the 1997 Thai Constitution and the subsequent 2007 Constitution, drafted under a military government, made no specific mention of sexual […]

Reclaiming and Redefining Rights. Thematic Studies Series 2: Pathways to Universal Access to Reproductive Health Care in Asia. Each of the four case studies begin with a general background of the country, which provides an overview of the health sector and its system, especially in its financing, followed by traversing the history of privatisation as well as progress […]

This publication is the result of an extraordinary commitment on the part of the women, men and young people who participated in an innovative experiment that used partnership as a strategy to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in Indonesia. Inspired by the idea behind the project, the initiative was kindly supported by […]

Advocacy for family planning education and services in Malaysia began with the pioneering work of concerned individuals and medical practitioners in the early 1950s. The first Family Planning Association (FPA) was registered in 1953 in the state of Selangor and in 1958, four state FPAs formed the Federation of Family Planning Associations, Malaysia (FFPAM). Today […]

Indonesia’s reproductive health status has been greatly affected by the social, economic and political circumstances in the country since 1999. The Government of Indonesia (GOI) cited the economic crisis as the main cause for the failure of numerous sexual and reproductive health programmes. Another oft-referred-to challenge was the frequent changes in governmental leadership (three presidents […]

The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) marked an important moment in the history of women’s reproductive health and rights the world over, as well as the further recognition that women’s empowerment and full participation in political, social and economic life were necessary conditions for development and progress to take place. Indeed with […]

There has been considerable progress in China in the field of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) since the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994. Following on the ICPD, the Chinese Government collaborated with NGOs to make a number of policy changes that relate broadly to family planning, public health, and […]