United Nations Population Fund – UNFPA Office in Kosovo in partnership with the Ombudsman Institution in Kosovo – OIK marked the World Population Day with a roundtable titled “Family Planning is a Human Right!”, as this year marks the 50th anniversary of the 1968 International Conference on Human Rights, where family planning was, for the first time, globally affirmed to be a human right.

The purpose of this roundtable was to continue advocating for the implementation of the recommendations from the evaluation report “Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Kosovo: A Reality Beyond the Law”, jointly developed by OIK and UNFPA Kosovo, with a special focus on family planning rights and provision of contraceptives as part of the essential medicines list.

The roundtable gathered stakeholders such as members of the Parliament (women’s caucus, committees for health, human rights, gender equality and education), Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education, Civil Society Organizations, Media, International Organizations etc. who had an opportunity to further discuss and advocate on Family Planning as a human right that needs to be respected.

The highlights of the roundtable were the presentation of two videos, titled “How can family planning affect population and economy growth?” and “Sexual and Reproductive Health” both of which are highly relevant topics for Kosovo.
The event also included a presentation on the situation of family planning in Kosovo by Dr. Merita Vuthaj Chief of Divison for Mother, Child and Reproductive Health at the Ministry of Health, highlighting the decrease of modern Contraceptive Prevalence Rate in Kosovo as well.

After the presentation, Uta Ibrahimi, who is the first woman from Kosovo to climb Mount Everest, spoke from her perspective as an alpinist about the importance of providing the right information on modern contraceptive tools and the opportunities they offer.

In conclusion Dr. Zarife Miftari from UNFPA highlighted all UNFPA intervetions in the area of family planing in Kosovo including support to policy development, SRH data collection, contraceptive security, development of training module on FP for family medicine doctors as a part of their Continual Proffesional Development – CPD, support to Ministry of Education, Science and Technology – MEST on Comprehensive Sexuality Education, sustainable social marketing, active peer educators network, community health education and promotion on SRH/RR. Dr. Miftari also expressed UNFPA’s commitment in supporting national institutions in further improvement of SRH and family planning in Kosovo.

At the end, all participants agreed that implementing the recommendations from the report is our common obligation and it is of paramount importance in improving sexual health services and reproductive rights in Kosovo.