This year's theme for World Population Day is “Family Planning is a Human Right” and coincides with the 50th anniversary of the 1968 International Conference on Human Rights, which for the first time affirmed family planning as a human right. The Tehran Proclamation, which was adopted at that conference, declares that "Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children."
However, for many women across the world birth control is still inaccessible, and many are still resorting to unsafe - and often harmful - pregnancy prevention measures. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), these methods include the use of "damaging chemicals like disinfectants to household supplies like kitchen sponges. They include practices entirely without scientific merit - like jumping up and down after sex."
According to UNFPA, an estimated 214 million women in developing countries are not accessing modern contraceptives despite wanting to prevent pregnancy, while an alarming 155 million women use no contraceptive method at all. The biggest obstacles to access to contraceptives for many of these women include lack of affordable services and little or no support from their intimate partners or communities.