The United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA Ethiopia country representative, Bettina Maas speaks to IPS at the ICPD25 Nairobi Summit and she says she is optimistic that this time around that the three critical commitments; bringing preventable maternal deaths, gender based violence and harmful practices, as well as unmet need for family planning to zero will be realized.
Every day in developing countries it is estimated that 20,000 girls under the age of 18 give birth. This amounts to 7.3 million births a year.
Governments across the world must ban all state-implemented harmful practices against the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex (LGBTQI) community delegates at the ICPD25 tells IPS.
One in five women globally lives with a disability even as they have same needs and interests as women without disabilities, their access to sexual and reproductive health services and rights remains severely limited.
Young women and girls are still subjected to a range of harmful practices and violence, including early marriage. Every year, an estimated 12 million girls get married before the age of 18.
For each of the 830 women dying each day from pregnancy complications and childbirth, an estimated 20 others suffer serious injuries, infections or disabilities.
This is the reality that millions of women face, and informs the Nairobi Summit’s three critical commitments which are to bring preventable maternal deaths, gender-based violence and harmful practices, as well as unmet need for family planning, to zero. To achieve this objective money is needed.
More than 6 000 delegates in the population development sector are gathering in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi this week to renew the promise made to girls and women 25 years ago in Cairo.
This is a special year for all rights-based health advocates, as we celebrate 25 years of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).
Every day 830 women die while giving life. At least 33,000 girls are forced into child marriage with 11,000 girls undergoing female genital mutilation. These are some of the cruel realities young women face every day. However, there is renewed hope that delegates expected to attend the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Nairobi this week will re-energise and breathe new life to the
Cairo Promise.
As we count down the remaining days to the opening of the
Nairobi Summit or the International Conference for Population and Development(ICPD), I am confounded by how much humanity has managed to simultaneously empower more women than at any other time in history, while at the same time failing to see that ‘women’s issues’ are actually ‘everyone’s issues’.
Currently, the topic of abortion as human rights leaves the world bustling. When the state of Alabama
1 in the United States enacted a very strict ban on abortion, it shocked the world. This prompted so-called conservative movements, led by female business owners, to make a full-scale advertisement in the New York Times claiming abortion is a human right
2 ; hence the global debate between
pro-life and pro-choice.
Over the years, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has worked in tandem with legislators and parliamentarians to help implement the historic Programme of Action (PoA) adopted unanimously by over 20,000 UN delegates at a landmark International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo back in 1994.
The Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) organized the “African and Asian Parliamentarians’ Meeting on Population and Development for ICPD+25” on August 5 - 6, 2019, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to serve as a platform to gather the opinions and set of proposed actions of parliamentarians in the Asia and Africa regions.
Khadija Zuberi, 23, from Ruaha Mbuyuni village in Tanzania’s central highlands, is a single mother to her four-year-old son, Hashim.
Parliamentarians met in Laos last week to discuss violence against women and girls.
The meeting was organized by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and hosted by the National Assembly of Laos.
Young people around the world are facing increasingly insurmountable, persistent barriers as they try to achieve their full potential and secure a prosperous future. However, Central Asia and the Asia-Pacific have already begun working to ensure that no one is left behind.
Parliamentarians from 36 countries met this weekend in Astana, Kazakhstan, to discuss the future of youth in Central Asia and the Asia-Pacific region. The gathering called “International Conference on Investing on Youth: Leaving No One Behind” took place on the Oct. 19 to 20, and the goal was to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), set by the United Nations, with regards to youth.
In the last 15 years, El Salvador has managed to reduce the proportion of hungry people living in extreme poverty by four percentage points. But they still represent 12.4 percent of the population, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Every Tuesday, there is something unusually exciting at no 7 Cwango Crescent, The Business Place, in Philippi, near Cape Town. Here, dozens of chemically free green vegetable crate loads are visible. So are the unlabelled rows of empty packets. It’s the packing day
.
The United Nations aims to help eliminate hunger and undernutrition – described as two of “greatest scourges” facing humankind -- by the year 2030.