Commitment to the Rights of Women

In 1994, the United Nations convened an historic conference in Cairo that changed the way governments, international agencies, and other professionals thought and talked about population. At the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), leaders from around the world agreed that the future of the world's low-income countries depended less on controlling numbers of people and more on improving the quality of people's lives. The focus of that improvement, they agreed, must be global improvement in the status of women.

UNFPA played a critical leadership role in this landmark conference that placed women's human rights and equality at the cornerstone of development.

The ICPD Programme of Action endorses the right of all individuals to have their reproductive health needs met over their life-spans through a sexual and reproductive health approach to information and service delivery. Reproductive rights are understood as human rights. The right to voluntary choice in reproductive decision making involves ensuring equality and equity between women and men and the provision of universal and equal access to comprehensive quality sexual and reproductive health services that protect privacy, informed and free consent, and confidentiality.

The main goals of the Programme of Action are:

Universal access to reproductive health services by 2015
Universal primary education and closing the gender gap in education by 2015
Reducing maternal mortality by 75 percent by 2015
Reducing infant mortality
Increasing life expectancy

These goals were refined and amplified in 1999. One of the most important additions concerned HIV/AIDS:

HIV infection rates in persons 15-24 years of age should be reduced by 25 percent in the most affected countries by 2005 and by 25 percent globally by 2010.