Foreword

Country Profiles for Population and Reproductive Health: Policy Developments and Indicators, 2005

It gives me considerable pleasure to issue this updated and expanded report entitled “Country Profiles for Population and Reproductive Health: Policy Developments and Indicators 2005,” a joint undertaking of UNFPA and the Population Reference Bureau.

The purpose of these materials is to provide an accurate portrayal of the population policy and programme situation in each country while also giving due attention to the need in almost all countries to expand considerably both donor and domestic resource mobilization efforts in order to meet pressing unmet needs, especially in family planning, reproductive health and HIV/AIDS services and prevention.

At the General Assembly Commemoration of the Tenth Anniversary of the ICPD in October 2004, I said the Cairo ICPD agenda “is built on a simple premise: that providing universal access to education and reproductive health services and promoting women’s empowerment will reduce gender inequality and poor health, and help break the cycle of poverty in which millions of individuals and families now find themselves. If governments make these critical investments in people, and use population data and policies not only to count people but to make people count, then a chain reaction will occur, that will lead to concrete progress – progress that can be measured by demographers, statisticians, economists and social scientists, and also by individuals as they go about their daily lives.”

The importance of the ICPD goals were reaffirmed this September at the 2005 World Summit. The largest-ever gathering of world leaders resolved to achieve universal access to reproductive health by 2015, promote gender equality and end discrimination against women. They resolved to integrate the goal of access to reproductive health into national strategies to attain the Millennium Development Goals to end poverty, reduce maternal death, promote gender equality and combat HIV/AIDS.

The world has reaffirmed the need to keep gender equality, HIV/AIDS and reproductive health at the top of its agenda. Investing well-targeted resources in these areas will bring vital gains in well-being to the daily lives of millions of people and at the same time greatly accelerate progress toward reaching all of the Millennium Development Goals. I am hopeful that the policy, programme and resource information as well as the indicators set forth in this report will help make this a reality.

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid
Executive Director

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