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UNFPA Global Population Policy Update

UNFPA Implements New Organizational Structure to Further Strengthen its Field Activities

ISSUE 82 - 18 July 2008

Below is a letter from Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, to Members of Parliaments from around the world, regarding the relocation of its geographical offices from New York to the respective regions around the globe.

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Dear Honourable Member of Parliament,

I am pleased to inform you that, in order to deliver on the results of its 2008-2011, Strategic Plan and fulfill its longer term vision, UNFPA is implementing its new organizational arrangement to further strengthen its field activities.

The new arrangement involves the relocation of its geographical divisions from New York, and merging them with the technical functions that are now present in the regions, through the establishment of five regional offices and six sub-regional offices around the globe. The new regional offices, which will be based in Bangkok, Johannesburg and Panama, and the sub-regional offices in Dakar, Johannesburg, Kathmandu, Kingston and Suva, will start operating in a phased manner in the second half of 2008. The Cairo regional office, the Bratislava regional office, and the Almaty sub-regional office will be opened in 2009. At the UNFPA headquarters, a new Programme Division and a restructured Technical Division will ensure the provision of more effective support to country offices.

With its strengthened field focus, the new UNFPA structure is expected to further promote national ownership and South-South cooperation, and allow the organization to more effectively meet the countries' needs by building stronger partnerships to develop institutional capacity at all levels. It will also facilitate our cooperation with regional bodies, commissions, organizations and other implementing partners at the country level.

Furthermore, the new structure will allow UNFPA to better adapt to the new aid environment, support the United Nations reform, and work closer with governments and partners to realize the vision of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). It will also enable us to be flexible enough to respond to national and regional priorities and emerging needs in the areas of population and development, reproductive health and gender equality.

I would like to take this opportunity to express our most sincere appreciation for your outstanding commitment to the ICPD Programme of Action and the Millennium Development Goals, and for your long-standing and close collaboration with UNFPA. We truly value this partnership, and we look forward to additional opportunities for collaboration that UNFPA's strengthened regional presence will offer.

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid
Executive Director

All previous issues of the UNFPA Global Population Policy Update can now be found on UNFPA's website at: http://www.unfpa.org/parliamentarians/news/newsletters.htm .

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This newsletter is issued by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in its capacity as the secretariat for the biennial International Parliamentarians' Conference on the Implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action (IPCI/ICPD). The first IPCI/ICPD was held in November 2002 in Ottawa, Canada, the second in October 2004 in Strasbourg, France and the third in November 2006 in Bangkok, Thailand. These dispatches are intended to highlight important developments taking place around the world so that parliamentarians can be kept informed of and learn from the successes, setbacks and challenges encountered by their fellow parliamentarians in other countries and regions in their efforts to promote the implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (September 1994, Cairo, Egypt). It should be noted that UNFPA does not necessarily endorse all of the policies described in this newsletter.

Please send mailing list update information to Ragaa Said at said@unfpa.org. If you have any questions or comments on the content of this newsletter, please contact Ragaa Said at said@unfpa.orgÂ , Nobuko Takahashi at takahashi@unfpa.org or Safiye Cagar at cagar@unfpa.org.