Background
Pacific island countries joined the rest of the world to endorse the
Plan of Action (PoA) of the International Conference on Population and
Development (ICPD) in 1994. The PoA recognized that individual
well-being is linked with sexual and reproductive health, population and
development, and that reproductive health and rights, as well as women’s
empowerment and gender equality, are cornerstones of population and
development programmes (1). The call for reproductive rights and
universal access to reproductive health was a breakthrough for
positioning adolescent health in the global health agenda. A focus on
adolescents and young people called for international and national
efforts to support educational and health service needs for adolescents
to enable them deal with sexual and reproductive issues in a positive
and responsible way (2,3,4).
The ICPD-PoA was a breakthrough for advocating reproductive health
rights. Pacific island countries began to translate the ICPD-PoA to
promote a rights-based approach in the delivery of reproductive and
sexual health services, reduce violence against women, promote gender
equality, reduce poverty, and protect the sexual and reproductive health
of adolescents in the broader context of health and development.
The launch of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000 was a
noble global strategy to reduce poverty. Special recognition was given
to investing in adolescent sexual and reproductive health, especially in
providing an enabling environment with information and services for
young people to make informed and responsible choices. This includes
making decisions about contraception, delaying pregnancy and deciding on
family size.
The end of the MDG era in 2015 highlighted the remarkable progress made
– young people are more educated about sexual and reproductive health,
they have better access to resources, have better access to reproductive
health services, and are increasingly using contraception to prevent
unplanned pregnancies (5,6). However, despite the gains made in the last
two decades, interventions are still poorly accessible among young
people, especially the less educated, the marginalized, and other
disadvantaged groups living in remote rural communities (6,7).