Project profile — Addressing Gaps in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Egypt

The project aims to empower women and engage men by increasing the awareness of, access to and quality of, family planning services in Egypt. Egypt’s population has dramatically increased in the last decade, reaching almost 100 million people in 2018. Access to quality family planning services is critical for women and adolescent girls to lead healthy lives, and is part of an important strategy to address high population growth rates. The project also aims to address the barriers women, adolescent girls and girls face in accessing quality health services including social norms, behaviours and attitudes. Project activities include: (1) procuring contraceptives and developing a distribution plan in targeted areas; (2) designing and rolling out of a comprehensive curriculum for population and family planning education; and (3) organizing advocacy events to solidify the national commitment for family planning. The project is part of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) national program, which aims to reach 5,500 family planning clinics, 14,000 Ministry of Health and Population outreach workers, 2,500 women’s health clubs and 60 million people through a comprehensive media campaign on population and family planning.

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) increased access to family planning and reproductive health services, particularly for women and adolescent girls; (2) educating youth, particularly adolescent girls, on the rights of women with regard to family planning, and raised public awareness of the value of smaller family size; and (3) strengthened government capacity to monitor the National Population Strategy and coordinate activities for empowering women with regard to family planning.

Results achieved at the end of the project (September 2024) include: (1) trained 1,506 service providers (1380 women and 126 men) on providing reproductive health and family planning counselling and services; (2) reached 768,180 beneficiaries with reproductive health and family planning services through mobile clinics; (3) established 200 community outreach and population awareness clubs and reached 76,650 community members (44,457 women and 32,193 men) with messages on reproductive rights and gender-based violence in 12 governorates. This marked progress in addressing sensitive issues at the community level; (4) developed and delivered edutainment (educational entertainment) to provide messages on the use of contraceptives, early marriage, gender-based violence and female genital mutilation. This includes establishing 17 Nawah Theatre teams, 24 Shamandora music teams and 3 films across 24 governorates; (5) trained and empowered 1,142 young people (640 women and 502 men) to disseminate positive messages on population issues; and (6) contributed to addressing key gaps in reproductive health and rights in Egypt using a comprehensive approach to empower women and adolescents and improved their access to quality family planning services.