This programme addresses critical challenges faced by young women around sexual health and sexuality. It has produced a range of advocacy, education and informational materials to support research, awareness-raising, advocacy and service delivery.    Girls Decide is about the sexual and reproductive health and rights of girls and young women. Around the world, girls aged 10 to 19 account for 23% of all disease associated with pregnancy and childbirth. An estimated 2.5 million have unsafe abortions every year. Worldwide, young women account for 60% of the 5.5 million young people living with HIV and/or AIDS. Girls Decide has produced a range of advocacy, education and informational materials to support work to improve sexual health and rights for girls and young women. These include a series of films on sexual and reproductive health decisions faced by 6 young women in 6 different countries. The films won the prestigious International Video and Communications Award (IVCA). When girls and young women have access to critical lifesaving services and information, and when they are able to make meaningful choices about their life path, they are empowered. Their quality of life improves, as does the well-being of their families and the communities in which they live. Their collective ability to achieve internationally agreed development goals is strengthened. Almost all IPPF Member Associations provide services to young people and 1 in every 3 clients is a young person below the age of 25. All young women and girls are rights-holders and are entitled to sexual and reproductive rights. As a matter of principle, the IPPF Secretariat and Member Associations stand by girls by respecting and fulfilling their right to high quality services; they stand up for girls by supporting them in making their own decisions related to sexuality and pregnancy; they stand for sexual and reproductive rights by addressing the challenges faced by young women and girls at local, national and international levels.

The Innovation Programme tests new ideas and approaches to solving some of today's greatest sexual and reproductive health and rights challenges. Please click here for an interactive map of our projects around the world. Ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health in a constantly changing world requires innovative thinking. The Innovation Programme connects local expertise with global knowledge to find new and effective ways to improve people’s sexual and reproductive health. IPPF Member Associations develop creative projects to address these challenges, and partner with independent researchers to provide evidence and rationale for their success or failure within a safe space to take managed risks and learn. Learning from innovation contributes to the evidence base and is shared widely, both internally and externally. In Phase I, 41 initiatives were funded between 2005 and 2012. These initiatives have made important and sustainable changes to people’s lives. These focused on issues including: child marriage, people trafficking, supporting refugees, integrated services for people living with HIV, inclusion of sexual and gender diversity, and advocating for access to safe abortion services. The current phase of the Innovation Programme is funding 11 initiatives, including mHealth interventions to increase contraceptive access for young people; access to safe post-abortion care in humanitarian crises; approaches to increase participation and access of men and boys to sexual and reproductive health; and low-cost behavioural insights interventions to improve uptake and effectiveness of comprehensive sexuality education.

The People Living with PLHIV Stigma Index documents how people have experienced HIV-related stigma and how they have been able to challenge and overcome stigma and discrimination relating to HIV. People living with HIV receive training in quantitative data collection, and implement the survey using a standard questionnaire which covers the following 10 areas: Experiences of stigma and discrimination and their causes Access to work and services Internal stigma Rights, laws and policies Effecting change HIV testing Disclosure and confidentiality Treatment Having children Problems and challenges for people living with HIV The People Living with HIV Stigma Index puts the principle of the greater involvement of people living with HIV and AIDS (GIPA) into practice, the research is driven by people living with HIV and their networks and provides them with evidence and opportunity to address challenges in their communities and catalyze change. The findings are instrumental in increasing collective understandings of stigma and discrimination, and detecting changes and trends over time. The evidence has shaped future programmatic interventions by revealing areas of need and gaps in existing programming. The People Living with HIV Stigma Index is a powerful advocacy tool which will influence policy and support the collective goal of governments, NGOs and activists to reduce stigma and discrimination related to HIV.   The People Living with HIV Stigma Index has been rolled out in more than 40 countries, where it has been a catalyst for fostering change. Each country is different, from the number of people interviewed to the composition of responses from different group (such as men who have sex with men, sex workers, injecting drug users and other key populations).  The People Living with HIV Stigma Index was developed and pioneered by a partnership between the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and the Global Network of People Living with HIV(GNP+), the International Community of Women Living with HIV (ICW) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

More and more low- and middle-income countries are pledging pledged to expand access to rights-based family planning. Through Joining Voices you can ensure your government meets its commitments. Joining Voices is an advocacy project that aims to safeguard and strengthen financial commitments to reproductive health and family planning, and reinforce political leadership on universal access. Joining Voices is facilitated on behalf of civil society by IPPF and Countdown 2015 Europe. The project is led by IPPF European Network and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Integra is a 5-year research initiative in Kenya, Malawi and Swaziland. It aims to reduce HIV infection, HIV-related stigma and unintended pregnancy. IPPF implements the Integra Initiative with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Population Council.  

Abortion stigma affects women and girls, abortion providers, reproductive rights advocates and communities. Although abortion is a common experience around the world, it is still largely stigmatised. Negative attitudes and beliefs about abortion may act as barriers to accessing safe services and can make it difficult for people to talk about their experiences of abortion. This can be very isolating, and may force people to continue unwanted pregnancies or to seek unsafe abortion. Since 2011 the David & Lucile Packard Foundation has supported IPPF to implement a range of initiatives to investigate and address abortion stigma. Find out more here, about the effective strategies and learning over the course of this project. It is often young people who are most severely affected by abortion stigma, and who are most at risk of suffering health complications as a result of unsafe abortion. Since 2014 IPPF has delivered a project focused on abortion stigma as it affects young people’s access to services, with targeted work in our Member Associations in Benin, Burkina Faso, India and Pakistan. This builds on previous initiatives and includes: Implementing individual, community and clinic-based interventions in the four countries where abortion stigma research was conducted under the previous grant. Abortion stigma at the community level will be measured at the beginning and end of each project using an adapted version of the Stigmatizing Attitudes, Beliefs and Actions Scale (SABAS) developed by Ipas Developing global guidance and tools to improve abortion messaging to ensure abortion is integrated into peer educator training and better raise awareness of abortion-related services to young people Building capacity of youth advocates to speak out on the right to access abortion services Generating and sharing of evidence and good practices on addressing abortion stigma   In addition to the abortion stigma work supported by the Packard Foundation, the IPPF Western Hemisphere Region (WHR) has been conducting a research study in collaboration with Ibis Reproductive Health to better understand the effects that the provision of abortion-related services have on providers’ and clients’ perceptions and experiences of stigma. This research has been conducted in four countries with different legal contexts and varying degrees of access to services: the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Colombia, and Argentina. WHR is also working with the University of Michigan to pilot facilitated group workshops to reduce stigma and foster resilience among abortion service providers in Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico and Peru. Through this project IPPF has created a range of tools and resources to support understanding of abortion stigma and to increase the capacity of our Member Associations to advocate for safe abortion, and to provide non-stigmatising education and information. How to talk about abortion: A guide for journalists, editors and media outlets encourages accurate reporting of the facts about abortion, and honest portrayals of abortion as part of real people’s lives and relationships. How to educate about abortion: A guide for peer educators, trainers and teachers is a comprehensive guide providing the rationale for teaching about abortion issues, as well a number of practical activities for doing so. The accompanying short animation distills this advice into just two minutes! ​​​​​​ How to talk about abortion: A guide to rights-based messaging is designed to help individuals and organizations think about the language and images they use to communicate about abortion and offers best practice tips. Again, a short animation has been created to share these tips further Our Member Associations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon, Ghana, and Pakistan have shared best practices for improving young people’s access to safe abortion services. These feature strategies based on: creating a ‘buddy system’ for young people accessing services, working with educational establishments, using social media, and youth friendly spaces respectively.   In 2015, young people from IPPF Member Associations in Spain, Nepal, Macedonia, Ghana and Palestine were awarded small grants to support projects focused on tackling abortion stigma. Read more about these youth-led projects.    The ‘Youth Against Abortion Stigma’ website features blogposts from young IPPF volunteers around the world. In 2017, young people from IPPF Member Associations in Guinea, Kenya, Nepal, Puerto Rico, Sierra Leone and Venezuela were awarded small grants to support youth-led projects focused on tackling abortion stigma.  SEE OUR RESULTS