UNFPA’s country offices are central to the Fund’s approach to population and development. Building solid working relationships with national, state and local governments, with NGOs and with the private sector depends on dedicated and professional Representatives and their staffs. "People with a positive outlook build positive country programmes," observes Mohammed Nizamuddin, Chief of UNFPA’s Technical and Policy Division in New York. "And that helps countries achieve their own goals. That’s what UNFPA is about."

UNFPA has had a profound effect on national attitudes to population, helping to bring population into the mainstream of development policy. Because population affects many other aspects of national life, increasing concern with population issues has helped to break down what Fama Hane-Ba calls "the pipestem form of vertical governance". Governments are increasingly integrating sectoral development efforts, forming permanent inter-agency development teams that work consistently together. This approach has been extended to international assistance: many countries have established mechanisms to avoid duplication and promote rational use of resources. The Fund’s approach has also promoted cooperation at the country level within the United Nations system.

At the international level, UNFPA has helped to promote the present solid consensus on what needs to be done in the field of population and development. Devising an appropriate population policy is now accepted globally as part of sound development strategy and is increasingly seen to be part of the foundation of economic as well as social development.

Much remains to be done. The agreements made at the International Conference on Population and Development call for $17 billion annually by the year 2000. This will help guarantee universal access to reproductive health services by the year 2015, universal access to education and the other goals of the Conference’s Programme of Action. Developing countries as a group are well on the way to fulfilling their part of the bargain; but slower than expected growth in population assistance from the international community means that the world is less than halfway towards its financial goal.

Nevertheless, the successes are there. Nearly 60 per cent of women in developing countries now have access to a full range of reproductive health services, including family planning, more than ever before. As a result, fertility is falling and population growth rates are slowing in all parts of the developing world.

"Development is not a five-day-a-week affair," Dr. Nafis Sadik, Executive Director of UNFPA, told African parliamentarians in 1996. "It is a full-time occupation. After Cairo, we have a tremendous agenda to get through. We have no time to waste." UNFPA’s Representatives would not disagree.

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