Highlights of Population Council’s 2015 Annual Report
In 2015, the world launched the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), raising hopes of a more concise framework for challenges such as eradicating poverty, ensuring equality and tackling climate change.
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The UN working group devising the SDGs, which replaced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which expired at a UN summit in September 2015, has pared down its list of proposed target areas from 19 to 17, in line with a bold agenda for global development by 2030.
The SDGs provide the road map for the work ahead. To achieve progress requires careful research and evidence to ensure that investments are aligned with policies and programmes that have proven to work.
Significant strides
For nearly 65 years, the Population Council, an international non-profit research organisation, has conducted research and delivered solutions that improve lives around the world – especially for young people. Last year the council made significant strides in revealing what works – and, importantly, what doesn’t – to improve outcomes for adolescents.
Here are a few highlights of the Council’s 2015 Annual Report:
The Council research found that comprehensive sexuality and HIV education programmes that address gender norms and power dynamics are five times more likely to be effective at reducing sexually transmitted infections and/or unintended pregnancy than those that do not.
Also, Council experts found that in sub-Saharan Africa, when families and communities recognised the harms of child marriage and were offered economic incentives, they delayed marriage for their daughters. In Ethiopian communities where girls were offered educational support such as school supplies, girls aged 12-14 were 94 per cent less likely to be married at endline than girls in the age range at baseline.
HIV strategy for young people
In Nigeria, Council experts collaborated with the government to develop the first-ever national HIV strategy for young people and guidelines on young people’s access to sexual and reproductive health services and participation in research, which will protect their health, rights and well-being.
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The findings are new, but the Council’s process is established routinely at the Population Council to generate innovative ideas, rigorously test them and ensure the results have real-world impact.
Because the future of millions of young people depends upon it, the Council is helping to create cultures that value adolescents and recognise their potential.