UNFPA’s leadership role in commodity security was formalized following the five-year review of the International Conference on Population and Development in 1999.
At that time, a Global Call to Action was adopted that describes what needs to be done and how the desired outputs would be achieved by various partners, under the overall coordination of UNFPA.
Based on the global call, UNFPA and its partners developed the Reproductive Health Commodity Strategy. Its purpose is “to improve the capacity of national programmes in developing countries to manage key areas of reproductive health commodities and increasingly, to provide those commodities to all who need them.”
The strategy is premised on engaging a variety of partners where each concentrates their efforts in relation to their particular comparative advantage to establish secure, efficient and reliable systems to supply and deliver reproductive health commodities. This requires:
Taken together, these actions form the global strategy for reproductive health commodity security that now guides the work of UNFPA and its partners.