The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) extends
assistance to developing countries, countries with economies
in transition and other countries at their request to
help them address reproductive health and population
issues, and raises awareness of these issues in all countries,
as it has since its inception.
UNFPA’s three main areas of work are: to help
ensure universal access to reproductive health, including
family planning and sexual health, to all couples and
individuals on or before the year 2015; to support population
and development strategies that enable capacitybuilding
in population programming; to promote awareness
of population and development issues; and to
advocate for the mobilization of the resources and
political will necessary to accomplish its areas of work.
UNFPA is guided by, and promotes, the principles
of the Programme of Action of the 1994 International
Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). In
particular, UNFPA affirms its commitment to reproductive
rights, gender equality and male responsibility, and
to the autonomy and empowerment of women everywhere.
UNFPA believes that promoting and safeguarding
these rights, and promoting the well-being of children,
especially girl children, are development goals in themselves.
All couples and individuals have the right to
decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of
their children as well as the right to the information and
means to do so.
UNFPA is convinced that meeting these goals will
contribute to improving people’s quality of life and to the
universally accepted aim of stabilizing world population.
We also believe that these goals are an integral part of
all efforts to achieve sustained and sustainable social and
economic development that meets human needs, ensures
well-being and protects the natural resources on which
all life depends.
UNFPA recognizes that all human rights, including
the right to development, are universal, indivisible,
interdependent and interrelated, as expressed in the Programme
of Action of the International Conference on
Population and Development, the Vienna Declaration and
the Programme of Action adopted by the World Conference
on Human Rights, the Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the
Programme of Action of the World Summit for Social
Development, the Platform for Action of the Fourth
World Conference on Women, and in other internationally
agreed instruments.
