Mr. President, Distinguished Delegates,
Colleagues and friends,
Introduction
Today, in my final statement to the Executive Board I will be as frank as I have always been with you. I will tell you what I perceive to be the successes, shortcomings and challenges that remain for UNFPA in ensuring accountability and driving the ICPD agenda forward.
I ask your indulgence please since this statement is longer than usual. I will be your Scheherazade today- and I promise you, I will tell you the ten-year story of UNFPA but I will not leave you in suspense since I will not have any more sunrises.
The lesson of ICPD
One thing I have learned is that the ICPD Programme of Action is not merely a hard-won historic consensus; it is a visionary blueprint that enables each country to address the specific challenges it faces. With global population soon to reach 7 billion; with high food prices and unemployment, water shortages, financial instability, and a changing climate; and with just five years left to reach the Millennium Development Goals, including the target on universal access to reproductive health, we need unprecedented solidarity and international cooperation.
The strength of the ICPD Programme of Action is its holistic approach. It involves cooperation across disciplines and sectors, and connects the impact of individual rights and opportunities to global outcomes. It has quantifiable goals to reduce child and maternal mortality and to guarantee universal education and access to reproductive health. And it is guided by the principle that women’s empowerment and gender equality are ends in themselves and are indispensable to achieving sustainable development.
It is built on the understanding that population trends and dynamics—such as population growth and distribution, age structures, urbanization and migration—affect social and economic development, and vice versa. And it addresses the issue of population and the environment and how to balance what the Earth gives us with what we take away by changing harmful patterns of production and consumption.
The agenda of ICPD is universal and timeless; it is an agenda of human rights in its various dimensions. It is about real things in daily life – the life and death of women in childbirth, be it in times of war or peace or natural disaster. It is about ensuring that women can make decisions about their own fertility; promoting gender equality and mutual respect and responsibility; supporting young girls who have experienced the shame of fistula to enable them to enjoy a new life; working with partners to prevent child marriage; preventing HIV among young people and vertical transmission from parent to child; and stopping and preventing violence against women.
These life and death issues extend beyond individuals and families; they are influenced by social and cultural norms and laws and government policies.
To make progress, we have had to unpack parts of the ICPD agenda and work with these components without losing sight of the whole. During the past decade, I discovered that ICPD is a way of life, both personal and professional and that achieving it is difficult. This was, and remains, a challenge of my tenure and of whoever will succeed me. And it will remain the challenge of my post-UNFPA life.
Promises made in 2001
Mr. President,
When I first addressed the Executive Board a decade ago in February 2001, I highlighted three basic challenges facing UNFPA: first, ensuring a financially stable Fund; second, strengthening its institutional capacity; and third, addressing the social and cultural context of programme development and delivery.
I said then, and continue to believe, that the three are mutually reinforcing. We need predictable and sustainable resources to meet the growing demands for our services; we need an accountable, efficient and effective organization to get results; and we must effectively bring universal principles and cultural values closer together if we are to attain sustainable and nationally owned results in the programmes we support.
Today, I will explain how during the past 10 years my colleagues and I have taken these three priorities forward, responded to new demands associated with UN reform, aid effectiveness and accountability, and registered significant achievements. I will also highlight some of the remaining challenges and opportunities, as I see them, both for UNFPA and for the ICPD Programme of Action, as we look towards 2015 and beyond.
Resources: a continuous challenge
Mr. President, let me start with the first challenge that I set out 10 years ago, ensuring a financially stable Fund.
When I assumed leadership of UNFPA, our financial resources were not as robust as we would have liked, nor as we had expected. Resources fell short of the requirements set out in our multi-year funding framework.
Today, I am pleased to report that the total financial resources committed to UNFPA have risen by 75 per cent in constant dollars since I took office in 2001, from approximately $400 million to nearly $700 million. Core contributions to UNFPA in 2010 are estimated at $466 million, co-financing contributions at $225 million. An increasing number of donors have entered into multi-year pledges, which allows UNFPA to plan and implement with a higher degree of certainty and flexibility.
With deep appreciation, I thank members of the Executive Board, Member States and UNFPA staff for this success. However, I would also like to take this opportunity to sound a warning.
While we continue to meet and surpass our financial targets, UNFPA is now experiencing a decline in funding from a high in 2008 when total income peaked at $845 million, and from 2007 when we boasted a total of 182 donor countries. It was particularly notable for the countries of the African continent to achieve 100 per cent contribution for three consecutive years before the financial crisis made its impact.
This year’s forecast includes drops in funding from six donors in the range of 6 per cent to more than 20 per cent, and countries are continuing to tighten budgets. This comes at a time when the global financial crisis has hit the most vulnerable disproportionately hard and placed increased pressure on services and social safety nets that are being stretched beyond their limits.
I believe that ensuring an accountable and financially sound Fund that has the capacity to respond to both Member States and other national stakeholders will remain a challenge in the years to come. This will require efforts on many levels to maintain and strengthen UNFPA’s existing funding base, and to identify and tap into new sources of funding.
Strengthen institutional capacity of UNFPA
Mr. President,
Resources are only part of the picture. Delivering on results is another. The two go hand in hand and require a results-oriented organization that is valued as a trusted partner.
When I assumed leadership a decade ago, I pledged to strengthen the institutional capacity of UNFPA to deliver and report strong results. With the support of all my colleagues, especially the senior management of UNFPA, we focused on developing and implementing a strategic vision of UNFPA’s goals and operations; realigning the organization to better respond to demands; introducing a human resource strategy to improve staff performance; and enhancing communications and knowledge-sharing to strengthen UNFPA’s intellectual leadership, visibility and impact. Subsequently I also committed myself to making staff safety and security a priority.
Today UNFPA has invested heavily in these areas. We now have a solid human resource system that fosters career management, competency-based performance, motivation, learning and training and work/life balance. UNFPA is recognized as a leader in human resource management with successful initiatives that are being replicated by others in the UN system. Our own staff surveys and those conducted by the International Civil Service Commission show that UNFPA commands one of the highest rates of staff satisfaction in the entire UN system.
During the past 10 years, we have also improved internal communications to allow staff to better share knowledge, resources and best practices to advance learning, productivity and effectiveness.
We have strengthened country office capacity through increases in international and national posts and new Operations Managers, though insufficiently so in view of growing demands. And we placed priority on accountability and quality programme implementation. We have fortified internal oversight and evaluation, modernized the audit system and moved towards risk management. And we have integrated business processes and strengthened results-based management throughout the organization.
Today UNFPA enjoys an automated financial and human resources system with real-time data across all of our offices worldwide and we are moving towards International Public Sector Accounting Standards.
I am pleased to report that the reorganization process is on track. As you will recall, the aim is to provide greater support to the countries and people we serve and contribute to stronger results for national development.
To do so, we are consolidating UNFPA’s technical assistance and programme support at the regional level in support of country operations, and engaging national, regional and sub-regional institutions and other organizations in the areas of population and development, reproductive health and rights, as well as gender.
It is with pleasure that I announce that the host country agreements have now been signed for our regional offices in Cairo and Istanbul and preparations have begun for relocation to be completed by December. I would like to thank all UNFPA staff, the Executive Board and Member States, especially the host countries of our regional and subregional offices, for your support and engagement during this process of reorganization.
Accountability: the priority above all priorities
Mr. President,
The environment of oversight and accountability has evolved since the beginning of my tenure and I would like to describe in more detail the steps we have taken to ensure that the funds entrusted to us are wisely spent.
In our quest to improve accountability, we have established an independent audit advisory committee, an ethics office, and a division for oversight services fully staffed with professional auditors, investigators and evaluators. We are guided by 11 accountability and oversight-related policies, and have progressively enhanced audits, investigations and evaluation coverage and reliability. We are working across all levels of the organization to ensure compliance as a zero tolerance issue.
We have initiated financial disclosures for staff, and instituted a UNFPA Integrity Helpline and procedures to protect whistleblowers against potential retaliation.
In 2009, the Investigation Branch of the UNFPA Division for Oversight Services received 38 complaints. Nine complaints were closed due to lack of sufficient evidence, and 29 led to full investigations. Since January 2009, the Fund carried out nine disciplinary or related actions, including five actions involving dismissal, separation from service or termination in connection with investigations into allegations of misconduct.
Based on the available evidence, the financial impact of the fraud cases investigated by the Investigation Branch is less than 0.1 per cent of UNFPA annual expenditure.
Should the present trend rate continue, a total of 40 to 45 complaints are expected in to be investigated 2010 but usually only a percentage of such cases result in proven fraud cases after investigation according to due process. While this increase in caseload could be interpreted as a negative sign, to UNFPA it is a positive sign that there is greater acceptance of accountability and more readiness to provide information and protect the organization without fear of reprisal or harassment. UNFPA has zero tolerance of fraud.
In order to continue to strengthen anti-fraud programmes and controls at UNFPA, we have established an additional post in the Investigation Branch and will introduce by December of this year a cost-effective Forensic Data Analytics Software System. We will also conduct another Fund-wide anti-fraud awareness and education campaign next year.
We are following up on audit recommendations, and will continue to monitor implementation twice a year with senior management, regional offices and business units, and increase compliance with policies and procedures and fluency with internal controls. Headquarters and regional offices are providing support to country offices to undertake new United Nations Development Assistance Frameworks to ensure that country programmes submitted to the Executive Board are based on lessons identified by evaluations. Furthermore, in 2011, we will conduct two important thematic evaluations, on maternal health, and on country programme evaluation.
When it comes to evaluations, we are guided by the evaluation policy adopted by the Executive Board in 2009. The focus is on achieving three objectives, namely: increasing the coverage of evaluations, improving their quality, and making better use of their findings. To meet these objectives, we are working to improve the building blocks for evaluation, that is: good programme design and monitoring, robust results-based management, and capacity building for our staff and implementing partners.
UNFPA is grateful to the Board for the clear strategic message given at the annual session in 2010 and the specific guidance provided to further the new evaluation policy by addressing the twin issues of accountability and learning.
Bringing universal principles and cultural values closer together
Mr. President,
The third challenge that I highlighted when I assumed office 10 years ago was bringing universal principles and cultural values closer together. This is as much a matter of personal conviction as it is an organizational priority.
In many ways, I was lucky to have parents, but especially a father, who saw Islam as force for social progress and development, of both individuals and societies. Recalling my first statement to the Executive Board in January 2001, I repeat by saying, in many ways, I am what the ICPD Programme of Action is all about – allowing women, especially from the South, to make choices in their lives, taking into consideration the particular historical moment, social conditions and cultural context.
When I took office, I was determined to institutionalize an approach to identify these experiences and demonstrate that supporting women to have choices in their lives helps societies to become stronger, not threaten them.
As we all know, reproductive health and rights are fraught with politics, sensitivities and taboos, often unnecessarily so. To make progress, we must bridge universal principles with national and local priorities and values.
By integrating gender, culture and human rights we have expanded the scope of ICPD supporters beyond the traditional actors. We fostered global and regional networks of supportive faith-based organizations that stand up for improving maternal health, preventing HIV and ending violence against women.
UNFPA has played a critical role in highlighting the power of culture to change social norms and gender dynamics for equality between men and women by engaging communities and local leaders. There is rising understanding that lasting change cannot be imposed from the outside, but must come from within.
Knowing the fear and resistance related to tackling issues of cultural values, I was gratified by a recent editorial in the medical journal, The Lancet, which called for going beyond a medicalized and technological approach to achieving the health MDGs to supporting more culturally sensitive and rights-based approaches. It argued that this would help eliminate discriminatory social structures and systems and foster gender equity, improved health and lasting change for generations.
By listening and learning from the communities we serve and supporting change from within, we can make development more effective and better pursue peace and security.
UNFPA has come a long way and the organization continues to evolve to respond to new challenges and opportunities.
Advancing the ICPD Agenda
Mr. President,
I would now like to highlight some of the other concrete achievements of UNFPA during the past decade.
I am proud of the progress that we have made to secure a solid policy and legal foundation for sexual and reproductive health. Today the concept of reproductive health is widely accepted and reflected in international, regional and national policies and plans. The majority of countries have amended or created laws to protect reproductive rights. And there is increased understanding that reproductive health and rights increase choices and productivity for individuals, which in turn reduces poverty.
Universal access to reproductive health is included in the framework of the Millennium Development Goals. And we now have reliable data tracking trends since 1990, which is reflected in the 2010 progress report on the MDGs.
During the last two decades in developing regions, the percentage of deliveries attended by skilled birth personnel has jumped from 53 to 63 per cent, and the voluntary use of contraceptives has risen from 52 to 62 per cent. This is real progress towards ensuring that every birth is wanted and every pregnancy is safe.
After decades of stagnation, new data reveal that maternal mortality rates are finally declining. This shows that interventions are working.
These findings point to an undeniable conclusion. Progress is possible and there have been significant gains. But universal access to reproductive health by 2015 will only be achieved with greater support to a comprehensive package of reproductive health services, including family planning.
Today there are still hundreds of thousands of women who die needlessly every year and more than 200 million with an unmet need for family planning. Though there is an increased acceptance of the reproductive health agenda, inequities are on the rise and progress has slowed in expanding the use of contraception, in meeting unmet need, and in reducing the number of teenage pregnancies amongst those who are poor and marginalized. During the past decade global health funding soared, but funding for reproductive health remained stagnant and funding for family planning actually declined.
To achieve MDG5, we have to reverse this trend and we have to reach women living in rural areas, those with little or no education, those from the poorest households and the largest generation of young people in human history.
At the upcoming MDG Summit, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will launch the initiative, Every Woman, Every Child, the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health. This has galvanized commitments from countries, UN partners and civil society to expand access to reproductive health services and improve the health of women and children.
UNFPA has played a pivotal role in fostering a global movement for maternal health, including through our campaign to end fistula and to expand the training of midwives and improve their livelihood. We are proud of the growing partnerships, advocacy, media attention, policy advances and increasing services being provided in countries in all regions of the world.
The challenge is to maintain the momentum, and ensure that the right to sexual and reproductive health remains central to the global public health and development agenda until every woman who wants to plan her family can do so and no woman dies giving life.
HIV prevention revolution
Mr. President,
Another area where we have registered significant achievements over the past decade is HIV prevention. Since 2001, HIV infections are down by 17 per cent. The credit goes to countries and governments and NGOs that have worked hard on all fronts to advance the right policies and programmes, and to all the UNAIDS co-sponsors, including UNFPA, who work together to support countries.
UNAIDS is a clear example that we can achieve results through collective, coherent support to countries: mother to child transmission of HIV has dropped dramatically; and HIV prevalence is dropping among youth in more than 16 of the 21 countries most severely affected by the epidemic.
UNFPA is proud to have been the first organization to call for linking sexual and reproductive health to HIV and AIDS. Though the acceptance of this call took time to take hold, it is now the rallying theme for UNAIDS and many of the civil society organizations of both the HIV and the reproductive health communities. The Global Fund on AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria reports that about 94 per cent of HIV programmes they approve support sexual and reproductive health activities.
Reproductive Health Supplies
Mr. President,
Over a decade ago, with generous grants from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Canada, UNFPA took a leadership role in Reproductive Health Commodity Security.
In 2003, UNFPA joined forces with several other agencies to form the Reproductive Health Supply Coalition. In 2007, we launched the Global Programme to Enhance Reproductive Health Commodity Security which is now active in more than 70 countries.
Today we see measurable results in many countries in which UNFPA works with national partners. Kenya saw an increase in contraceptive prevalence after 10 years of stagnation; Cambodia managed a secure stream of essential supplies with no major stock-outs; the Maldives Government committed to purchasing all its country’s contraceptives by the end of 2010, and Ethiopia more than doubled the use of modern contraceptives.
Population data and census
Distinguished Delegates,
UNFPA was instrumental in providing data for development through its special initiative for the 2010 census round. We were the lead agency for many of the more complex censuses such as Iraq, which is in progress, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Sudan and others. These censuses have been accepted as meeting international standards.
Good data are critical for effective planning and for good governance, transparency and accountability. This is especially important to address the needs of the largest youth population, ageing societies, and to develop policies to address urbanization and migration. Also, population mapping is essential to adaptation to climate change.
Reproductive Health and Gender in Humanitarian Response
Mr. President,
Though it has taken a great deal of advocacy and negotiations, we have made considerable progress during the past decade in giving increased attention to gender and sexual and reproductive health and data collection in response to emergencies and natural disasters. Planes now carry safe motherhood kits along side food, tents and other humanitarian supplies.
Guidelines on gender, youth, sexual and reproductive health, and gender-based violence are now used by aid workers worldwide, making humanitarian response more effective.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the historic Security Council resolution 1325 on women, war and peace and I am pleased to report that the 2010 State of World Population report to be launched in October will focus on conflict, crisis and renewal and generations of change.
Tomorrow we will discuss the evaluation of UNFPA humanitarian response, and we look forward to hearing your views and guidance. We need your continued support as we prepare for more disasters of greater magnitude and impact: indeed, sometimes the special needs and contributions of women and young people get forgotten under the pressure of emergency response.
One need look no further than Pakistan where unprecedented floods have created a sea of suffering with more than 17 million people affected, of whom 70 per cent are women and children. During the next three months, we expect more than 52,000 pregnant women will be delivering babies and they need increased care and support. Our Country Office there is doing a remarkable job under difficult circumstances working closely with Government Ministries of Health, UN partners, NGOs, especially local NGOs, and donors. We are working to provide life-saving reproductive health services, as well as basic hygiene supplies and psycho-social support services. UNFPA has established 36 fully-equipped and staffed service delivery units and is working with partners to coordinate prevention and response to gender-based violence.
UN Reform
Mr. President,
I have served in the United Nations for 35 years and have never been more impressed with the attention being given to United Nations reform in the last few years. In the past, we looked internally and proposed changes to our own processes. Now we focus on national ownership and how programmes are to be implemented in their own countries.
Guiding the way forward are the Paris and Accra agreements on development effectiveness and the 2007 General Assembly resolution 62/208 on the Triennial Comprehensive Policy Review (TCPR) Of Operational Activities For Development of the United Nations System. This landmark resolution reaffirms the guiding principles of nationally owned and led development for sustainability, with a focus on national execution and using, to the fullest extent possible, national expertise and institutions and avoiding parallel structures.
Mr. President,
I draw this resolution to your attention because this has been the approach of UNFPA since its establishment. It could not have been otherwise. UNFPA is a relatively small organization and has depended on its national partners, governmental and non-governmental, to deliver its programmes.
UNFPA recognized early on the criticality of national ownership and leadership and adopted national execution as its preferred implementation modality. We are aware that this approach has its own challenges especially in terms of the capacity of our partners and its impact on accountability.
We accept this challenge and have accordingly established the function of Executive Coordinator for National Execution in order to address the accountability demands of national execution. However, we and our national partners are facing the challenge that accompanies the transition to full capacity at the country level to respond to audit requirements.
I regret to inform you that the United Nations Board of Auditors has issued a qualification with respect to national execution expenditure in the UNFPA biennial financial statement for 2008-2009 and this issue will be discussed at the Board next year. I bring it to your attention at this point because I promised you transparency and frankness in my closing statement. We received this qualification despite the colossal efforts that UNFPA has undertaken to respond to the required documentation by the auditors. This qualified audit is a reflection of the need to further develop the capacity of both our offices and our national partners to achieve the required accountability results.
We have put in place a plan to improve programme design and develop the capacity of our staff in the country offices and our national partners. We have started implementing the plan but need to carry it forward. This will be the challenge for the new leadership and it requires the support of the Executive Board. We must recognize that our country offices, especially those in complex situations, require additional and higher-level operations management staff to bring about the qualitative change needed in this area. I leave this in your capable hands with the hope that you will support such a request in the biennial budget for 2012 and 2013.
This brings me to the related matter of sector-wide approaches and budget support. UNFPA was the first United Nations organization to join sector-wide approaches to ensure that reproductive health and gender issues are streamlined into national budgets, policies and plans. In this way, we were contributing to the effectiveness of our national partners, who are responsible for getting results.
This is the change in the aid and development environment we are all facing and we must adjust more rapidly to the current reality. With government ownership and other national partners being supported by international partners, the issue of attribution and contribution becomes central to any further dialogue on accountability especially as it relates to ownership.
The complexity of accountability of all partners becomes even more complex if we are to implement paragraph 40 of the TCPR resolution that calls for continuing to “strengthen national execution bearing in mind the importance of building national capacity, simplifying procedures and aligning them with national procedures”. I therefore place before your consideration that this emerging accountability issue of attribution and contribution deserve the utmost and immediate attention of Member States.
Mr. President,
Distinguished Delegates,
UNFPA has rallied to play a central role in making the UN system more effective and accountable. We are doing our best to keep up with all of the demands of UN reform and the new aid environment, and we remain dedicated to the vision and spirit of aligning the United Nations to better support national development.
Given increasing demands, our staff members are being called to do more and more and their capacity is stretched to the limit, and this is not optimal as we strive to improve the overall performance of the organization.
I hope that beginning from next year, the Executive Board will require that any decision should be accompanied by a clear agreement on its financial implications and an indication of where the resources will be made available.
Fragmentation within development, by both bilateral donors and international organizations, continues to be a major barrier to improving coherence and effectiveness as quickly as we would wish. There are too many parallel processes required by the United Nations operational organizations and by the bilateral donors and this places an unacceptable level of demands on our national partners, especially when it comes to assessments and reporting. Together we have to find ways to simplify and harmonize so that we can be more efficient. The transaction costs on Member States and civil society partners are still too high and our partners are telling us so, repeatedly. And UNFPA suffers from a similar high level of transaction costs by its donor countries.
The mid-term review of the UNFPA Strategic Plan and the development of the integrated budget provide an opportunity for Executive Board members to contribute to the process of simplification and harmonization to ensure that we can better deliver and report on results and that the indicators chosen are relevant and appropriate and that they are coordinated with other indicators requested by other partners. I believe such engagement would reduce transaction costs, and increase mutual accountability, not only to each other but also to the people we serve.
As we strive to improve development effectiveness and despite the heavy workload placed on UNFPA colleagues, I am proud of the role played by UNFPA to champion UN reform, harmonization and system-wide coherence. I am proud of the work being accomplished by the United Nations system to streamline and harmonize business practices, which was formulated when I chaired the High-level Committee on Management for two years.
UNFPA has always been committed to national ownership and execution of programmes by national partners and thus it was natural that we gave total support to the Delivering as One pilots and now the One Programme modality as determined by the relevant countries. We are committed to working with UN colleagues in a spirit of trust and collaboration.
It is in this spirit that UNFPA welcomes the new UN Women, as the voice of all women, and looks forward to working together closely to advance our common goals of women’s empowerment and gender equality. In preparation, we have reviewed our work on gender and focused it even more on issues that are very specific to our mandate. There will be another opportunity to further examine our Strategic Plan during the mid-term review that will take place next year.
Partnerships are the way forward
Mr. President,
UNFPA could not have achieved what we have during the past decade without the support of the Executive Board and our wide circle of friends and supporters.
We have worked in a strategic and inclusive manner to ensure that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We have supported a global network of parliamentarians, young people, NGOs and civil society including faith-based organizations, foundations and the private sector to advance issues of population and development, gender and reproductive health and rights. UNFPA is more effective due to partnership and the guidance we receive from our External Advisory Panel, Youth Advisory Panel, Audit Advisory Committee, and the Global NGO Advisory Panel.
I am also proud of our partnerships with our sister organizations and would like to make a special mention of the H4+ (WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, the World Bank and UNAIDS) as well as the H8 that brings these same organizations together with GAVI, the Gates Foundation and the Global Fund to Fight HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria. We have continued to strengthen these partnerships as we strive to cooperate seamlessly to improve public health and development effectiveness and donor coherence.
During the past decade, funding and partnerships for global health have expanded dramatically, and UNFPA has worked hard to ensure that the holistic concept of sexual and reproductive health through the life cycle is embraced and prioritized.
Young people: the leaders of today and the makers of tomorrow
Before I close, I would like to highlight the critical importance that young people play in achieving the ICPD Programme of Action. We at UNFPA have realized this and “walked the talk” to embrace youth as leaders because our young partners expect that of us.
We work to ensure that our programmes have a youth perspective in terms of content and in terms of engagement and implementation. We are very proud of the work done by our Youth Cluster in the Technical Division and it is staffed with young people. We are also very proud of Y-Peer that started as a UNFPA network for the prevention of HIV and has now matured into large networks of institutions. And we are very proud of our Special Youth Programme that brings young people as fellows to UNFPA headquarters for six months to provide input into our global programmes and then return to their respective countries to work in our offices. These young fellows bring great insight and innovation to our programmes and are truly an asset to the Organization. We at UNFPA believe that young people are the leaders of today and the makers of tomorrow.
Closing
Mr. President,
For the past decade, I have done my best to keep UNFPA safe and strong. It’s been an incredible journey. Even at the beginning of this 21st century, more and more fathers and mothers want equal opportunities for their daughters but the right of a woman to control her own body and destiny continues to be contested. This keeps all of us in UNFPA motivated to do more.
I would like to thank the staff of UNFPA for their support, commitment and for going out there every day, in sometimes very difficult and challenging conditions, to stand up for our collective mission to make sure that every birth is wanted, every pregnancy is safe, every young person can prevent HIV infection and every woman is treated with dignity and respect.
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all of you as Board members for your support to me personally and your support to UNFPA and the ICPD Programme of Action. The ICPD agenda continues to be sensitive and can be easily sacrificed and we need champions, wise and long-term champions, who see the big picture and will remain united.
As we look forward, the 20-year ICPD Programme of Action from 1994 to 2014 remains an indispensable and unfinished agenda. The Member States of the United Nations will decide what happens to the follow-up of this Conference.
At UNFPA, we believe that the inter-governmental process should yield the best outcome for the Cairo agenda, for our beneficiaries and for our partners.
In this regard, the ideal process should ensure quality data and analysis on the state of population and development and reaffirm the ICPD Programme of Action. It should protect the achievements of Cairo; respond to new challenges and the changing development environment; and reinforce the integration of the ICPD agenda in global processes related to development, including women’s empowerment and gender equality.
As members of the Board, I urge you to keep standing up for this vision of universal reproductive health and rights, and for the importance of collecting and using population data to guide effective policies and programmes. We will not achieve the Millennium Development goals unless greater attention is paid to population issues and this means more investment in young people and women and reproductive health, including family planning. I urge you to take this message forward in the upcoming MDG Summit.
Distinguished Members of the Board, I leave in your care and in the trust of the new leadership an organization that has come a long way, that continues to face the challenges of a rapidly changing external and internal environment, and that has to be well resourced to meet these challenges. UNFPA has come a long way and it will continue to move forward because every one in the organization believes in serving “We the People”.
My friends, my colleagues and I know from first hand experience that working in UNFPA is not just a job for just any institution - it is a commitment that lasts a lifetime. It is a mindset and a way of life. It is about a life for all of equality, opportunity, peace, dignity, self-worth, and self-fulfillment. The ICPD Programme of Action is very much a human rights agenda. It requires compassion for those we serve and passion for the cause. And I will continue to be a champion for this cause as long as I live.
I thank you.
