| dc.description.abstract | Faith is an integral part of life for many people and communities. Religious Leaders are trusted and respected advisors and advocates on many issues, including health. What is l an obvious but obscured fact is that globally, there are many religious leaders who steadfastly support and promote family planning because they know it protects the health of mothers and children, reduces the number of abortions, promotes family health and wellbeing and is consistent with their religious and moral beliefs.
Many religious institutions operate health facilities that provide family planning services often to marginalized and hard-to-reach populations. For the first time, 86 faith leaders and representatives of faith-based organizations met for a Faith Pre-Conference at ICFP 2016 to discuss how faith communities can leverage their power and resources to partner with other organisations and advocate with governments and partners for increased resources for health and specifically family planning . These faith and religious leaders were representatives from Buddhist, Christian, Confucian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim faiths from 26 countries. This participation of faith representatives was unprecedented in the history of the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP).
Faith Pre-conference preceded the ICFP, held on January 25th-28th 2016 in Nusa Dua, Indonesia. The Faith pre-conference was held on January 23th-25th 2016. Its organisation was led by the Faith Subcommittee Co-Chaired by Faith to Action Network, Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH), and Muhammadiyah.
The subcommittee comprised of: African Council of Religious Leaders (RfP), Al-Azhar University, Cordaid, Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA), Ecumenical Pharmaceutical Network (EPN), Engender Health, Evidence to Action Project (E2A), Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University, Population Action International, The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Uganda Protestant Medical Bureau (UPMB), and World Vision.
The participants based their discussions around Family Planning as essential in improving health, ending extreme poverty and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, Voluntary family planning as consistent with faith values as it protects the lives and health of mothers and children. In addition to that, they discussed how they as Faith leaders could become influential advocates of voluntary family planning.
The main goal of the Faith and family planning preconference was to sensitise the participants for active participation in the implementation of the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) family planning agenda at national and international levels. | en_US |
