World Contraception Day 2014: Teen Pregnancy Rates Still High Worldwide

World Contraception Day, which falls on 26 September, is a global campaign that aims to raise awareness on contraception methods people can use to avoid unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

This year's theme is "It's your life; it's your future; know your option".

One of the campaign educational materials, the Teen Outreach Pack, targets youths aged 15 to 19 and encourages them to take responsibility for contraception.

The World Health Organization has said about 16 million girls worldwide give birth each year.

Teen Pregnancy Rates in Developed Countries

Although teen pregnancy rates have decreased in the US and in the UK in recent years, a 2014 report by the Guttmacher Institute said almost 615,000 US women aged 15 to 19 become pregnant each year, while 82% of these pregnancies are unwanted. This rate is more than twice as high as rates in Canada (28 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19) and Sweden (31 per 1,000).

According to a 2012 report, approximately 20,000 teenagers in Poland give birth each year.

During 2010, around 4% of pregnant women were teenagers, the majority of whom were aged between 15 and 19. Although sex education was made compulsory in the country in 2009, some critics argued that in many schools, the standard of education on the subject is poor.

Iceland has the highest rate of teen pregnancies among the Nordic countries, according to a 2014 report.

Helga Sól Ólafsdóttir, a social worker at the women's division of the Landspítali National University Hospital, said one of the factors for the high rate is "contraceptives are expensive in Iceland and perhaps we could reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies by improving access to them".

Teen Pregnancy Rates in Developing Countries

Teen pregnancy in developing countries is often associated to child marriage, a widespread practice in several Asian and African countries.

According to a 2013 report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), out of the 20 countries with the highest rates of adolescent pregnancy worldwide, 18 are African, with Niger being at the top of the list, as 51% of women give birth before the age of 18 every year.

Another report by UNFPA said Niger has the highest percentage of child marriage in the world (75%). In that country, one in three girls is married before the age of 15 and 75% of women aged 20 to 24 are married before they reach 18.

In Bangladesh, since 2000, nearly three million girls have given birth before the age of 18. According to Unicef's State Of The World's Children report, one third of women in Bangladesh aged 20 to 24 are married by the age of 15 and about two thirds by the age of 18. The percentage is much higher in rural areas.

At least 76 out of 1,000 girls in India aged 15 to 19 become pregnant each year, where UNFPA reported 47% of girls are married before the legal minimum age. The northern State of Bihar has the highest incidence of child marriage at (68%), followed by Bangladesh (66%), Jharkhand (55.7%), Rajasthan (57.6%), Uttar Pradesh (54.9%), West Bengal (54.8%) and Madhya Pradesh (53.8%).