United Nations Population Fund (Brazil)

Creating a world in which all pregnancies are desired, all births are safe and each young person reaches their potential.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is the UN international development agency that deals with population issues. Since its inception in July 1967, it has been a key player in population development programs related to sexual, reproductive health and gender equality.
UNFPA is currently guided in its work by the Program of Action approved at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo, Egypt, in 1994. During the ICPD, 179 UN Member States - including Brazil - agreed that gender equality and meeting health and education needs, including reproductive health, are prerequisites for achieving long-term sustainable development.

The Cairo Program of Action represented a paradigm shift in the global approach to population and development: if the objectives were once solely demographic, after the ICPD the focus has been on promoting human rights, with an emphasis on the exercise of reproductive rights. and the autonomy of individual choices.

UNFPA's main goals since then are to expand the possibilities for women and young people to lead healthy sexual and reproductive lives, to accelerate universal access to sexual and reproductive health, including voluntary family planning and safe motherhood, and to seek the realization of rights. and opportunities for young people.

UNFPA also helps countries use population data to anticipate future challenges; offers technical assistance that strengthens and empowers its partners; supports policy making and national capacity building by ensuring that reproductive health and the rights of women and young people remain central issues on the development agenda.

UNFPA is making progress - fewer women are dying in childbirth, more unwanted pregnancies are being avoided and younger people are expanding their opportunities. But we need to broaden these efforts so that we can achieve a healthy and fair world.

Achieving the goals of the ICPD Program of Action is also an essential step towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, a set of seventeen goals set in 2015 by leaders around the world to follow up on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and eradicate poverty. poverty by 2030.