United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

the United Nations Population Fund, is an International Development Agency that promotes the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity. UNFPA supports Countries in using population data for policies and programmes to reduce poverty and to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.

To assist the Millennium Development Goals, UNFPA seeks to promote Gender equality and Empower women, improve maternal health and Combat HIV/AIDS.

UNFPA helps governments, at their requests to formulate policies and strategies to reduce poverty and support sustainable development. The Fund also assists countries to collect and analyse population data that can help them understand population trends and encourage governments to take into account the needs of future generations, as well as the present.

Making Motherhood Safer

Every minute, a woman in the developing world dies from treatable complications of pregnancy or childbirth. Every minute, a family is devastated. The lives of surviving children are put at risk. Communities suffer. And for every woman who dies, as many as 20 are seriously harmed by fistula or other injuries of childbearing.

UNFPA's strategy for preventing maternal mortality includes:

- Family Planning to reduce unintended pregnancies

- Skilled care at births

- Timely emergency obstetric care for all women who develop complications

Supporting Adolescents and Youth

UNFPA invests in programmes to meet young people's needs for health care, education, and economic opportunity and life skills. The Fund works to ensure that adolescents and young people receive accurate information, non-judgmental counselling and comprehensive and affordable services to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. In its work, UNFPA seeks to engage young people as active participants in programmes that affect them.

Promoting Gender Equality

For more than 30 years, UNFPA has been in the forefront of bringing gender issues to wider attention, promoting legal and policy reforms and gender sensitive data collection, and supporting projects that empower women economically.

Using Culturally Sensitive Approaches

UNFPA's activities touch on the most sensitive and intimate spheres of human existence, including reproductive health and rights, gender relations and population issues. Attitudes about these subjects vary widely between and among different cultures.

Changing deeply rooted attitudes, behaviours and laws especially those dealing with gender relations and reproductive health can be a long process that requires a culturally sensitive approach. The Fund respects cultural diversity. At the same time, it rejects those practices that endanger women and girls lives. It works closely and respectfully with communities to enlist their support in upholding the human rights of all its members.

Securing Reproductive Health Supplies

Without essential commodities such as contraceptives, HIV testing kits and emergency obstetric care equipment, people cannot fully exercise the rights and access reproductive health care services. In many places, male and female condoms are urgently needed to prevent the spread of HIV. UNFPA's mandate in this area is to provide the right quantities of the right products in the right condition in the right place at the right time for the right price.