Synthesis of key findings across ten countries of the FIGO project on Advocating for Safe Abortion

The aim of the synthesis report is to discuss the main achievements and key results across the ten project countries of the Advocating for Safe Abortion Project (ASAP) and to acquire an understanding of the enabling and impeding factors in safe abortion advocacy. It is intended for the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO), implementing societies and the donor and could be used as well for partners and advocates to share lessons learned on health providers’ advocacy for safe abortion.

To gain insights into what the main achievements have been across the project countries, final evaluations were conducted in the ten countries from February to May 2022. The methodology of these evaluations can be found in a separate methods appendix and the country-level details and results are described in ten country reports. A thematic cross-country analysis was conducted to identify commonalities in the key findings and to distil the lessons learned across all the countries. For this cross-country analysis, the five strategic pathways of the theory of change were used in a matrix approach to collect the key findings for each country, including key results, harvested project outcomes, main actors of change, conditions for success, sustainability and challenges plus mitigation strategies in project implementation. Subsequently, common themes were identified and described. To assess the role of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO), data from the capacity-strengthening survey from all ten countries were used to demonstrate the project staff’s perception of the capacities gained and FIGO’s role, among others. Also, five qualitative interviews were conducted with international partners to get a perception of FIGO’s role and its importance in the international field. This synthesis report starts with a summary of the overall analysis and then highlights specific details and evidence on the five pathways of change and the relevance of a multi-country project.