Throughout out my life and my entire career, I have been deeply committed to women's health, both as a human right and as a development issue. My interest goes back to my early days in Pakistan, as a civilian medical officer in charge of women's and children's wards in various armed forces hospitals, directing a medical staff of up to 50 officers.
From those early days up until now, women's health concerns are still not fully understood or addressed. Women are a vulnerable group. They experience higher morbidity and disability than men through the life cycle. Globally, more than one third of the disease burden for women of reproductive age is due to conditions that affect women exclusively or predominantly. Women face a wide range of health, risks, related to nutrition, reproductive health, violence, ageing, work, and lifestyles. Unfortunately, these risks are compounded by social and economic factors related to gender inequality and discrimination.
Discrimination against women affects their health throughout their lives; indeed, it starts even before birth. Early discrimination is reflected in higher rates of abortion for female foetuses; in different feeding practices and nutritional status for boys and girls; and in higher incidence of certain disease and death rates among young girls.
A major share of women's health burdens relates to their reproductive and sexual health.
Reproductive health problems begin in adolescence, including too-early pregnancies, unplanned and too-closely-spaced births and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. Women are biologically more vulnerable to HIV and AIDS than men are and currently account for 43 percent of all adults living with HIV/AIDS. Young women are disproportionately affected.
Abortion also has a detrimental effect on women's health, with some 25 million abortions performed under unsafe conditions each year, resulting in the death of an estimated 70,000 women. A large proportion of unwanted pregnancies and abortions would be avoided, and all women would benefit if safe and effective means of contraception were universally available. Yet more than 100 million women who want to limit of space their pregnancies are still without the means to do so.
There is an urgent need for a more integrated approach to women's health, including their reproductive health, their rights, their roles and status in society and their access to education, health and economic and political opportunities, where they continue to be discriminated against and treated as second class citizens.
These are among the issues of concern to us, at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Which I head.
UNFPA began its operations in 1969 and is the largest international source of population assistance. Our mandate is to assist developing countries and countries with economies in transition and other countries, at their request, in addressing reproductive health and population issues, and to increase awareness of these issues in all countries.
Our work is governed by the goals and principles of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo in September 1994, as well as the key actions emanating from the review of its implementation by the United Nations General Assembly Special Session in June/July 1999. The Programme of Actions, which is anchored in a human rights framework, has set specific objectives for all countries relating to health, women's status and social development. Through it, we affirm our commitment and to the autonomy and empowerment of women everywhere.
Our three main areas of work are: to help ensure universal access to reproductive health, including family planning and sexual health to all couples and individuals on or before the year 2015; to support population and development strategies that enable capacity-building in population programming; to promote awareness of population and development issues and advocate for the mobilisation of resources and political will to accomplish our work.
In carrying out our work, we are guided by the principle that all couples and individuals have the right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children, as well as the right to the information and means to do so.
We believe that providing high quality reproductive health care and education for girls and women improves their position in the family and society, contributes to national development and leads to family well-being, increased use of family planning and lower fertility and infant mortality. Our other special programme interests include youth and adolescents, ageing, HIV/AIDS, migration and population and the environment.
We also encourage men to support women's advancement and to take greater responsibility for their own reproductive behaviour. Political leaders and policy makers, community leaders and men in the family need to learn to value women as themselves, not as tools of demographic policy or means of bearing by children to continue to the family name.
We support only voluntary population activities and carefully monitor our programmes to ensure that activities we support conform to universally accepted standards of human rights. We recognise that coercion in any form is a breach of human rights.
We do not provide support for abortion anywhere in the world. We do, however, strive to reduce high levels of unsafe abortion and ill health by increasing access to family planning methods and enabling women to use reproductive health's services and information. We also work to end the public health threat of gender-based violence.
Funds for our work at UNFPA come from voluntary contribution. We are primarily a funding organisation. We work closely with other agencies of the United Nations system as well as with civil society organisations, including non-governmental organisations (CSOs), including women's and youth groups. An example of our co-operation with CSOs is the Initiative for Reproductive Health in Asia, which is the largest co-operation arrangement between the European Commission, UNFPA and the CSO sector.
In 1998, we provided support to 156 countries: 45 in sub-Saharan Africa, 43 in Asia and the Pacific, 34 in Latin America and the Caribbean and 34 in the Arab States and Europe.
In the Asia and the pacific region, which received just under a third (32.3 percent) of our resources for country programmes in 1998. Our assistance was primarily on the operationalizing reproductive health services, including adolescent reproductive health, with a focus on national capacity building. We have continues to support efforts made by most countries to revise or develop population and reproductive health policies, operational guidelines and reproductive health clinic and protocol standards and to integrate their reproductive health services. We also support extensive training programmes in reproductive health, information, education and communication, and counselling in a number of countries, including Pakistan.
On 12 October of this year(1999), the world is observing the "Day of Six Billion". Of course, we do not know the exact day-some experts have put it earlier this year. However, this will be a time for us at UNFPA to reflect on our past accomplishments and to chart our path for 21st Century.
Our 30 years in existence, we have seen a transformation in the field of population and development. In particular, the impact of reproductive health programmes in rapidly growing. Official support for family planning is virtually universal. Families are half the size they were in 1969, and population growth is slowing down. Acceptance that freeing people to make choices in their reproductive lives have made a difference. But experience has shown that more needs to be done.
As we approach the new Millennium, we plan to increase our efforts to address the reproductive health needs of all the world's population, and we call on all our partners to do their part in making this world a better place for all humankind.
From those early days up until now, women's health concerns are still not fully understood or addressed. Women are a vulnerable group. They experience higher morbidity and disability than men through the life cycle. Globally, more than one third of the disease burden for women of reproductive age is due to conditions that affect women exclusively or predominantly. Women face a wide range of health, risks, related to nutrition, reproductive health, violence, ageing, work, and lifestyles. Unfortunately, these risks are compounded by social and economic factors related to gender inequality and discrimination.
Discrimination against women affects their health throughout their lives; indeed, it starts even before birth. Early discrimination is reflected in higher rates of abortion for female foetuses; in different feeding practices and nutritional status for boys and girls; and in higher incidence of certain disease and death rates among young girls.
A major share of women's health burdens relates to their reproductive and sexual health.
Reproductive health problems begin in adolescence, including too-early pregnancies, unplanned and too-closely-spaced births and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. Women are biologically more vulnerable to HIV and AIDS than men are and currently account for 43 percent of all adults living with HIV/AIDS. Young women are disproportionately affected.
Abortion also has a detrimental effect on women's health, with some 25 million abortions performed under unsafe conditions each year, resulting in the death of an estimated 70,000 women. A large proportion of unwanted pregnancies and abortions would be avoided, and all women would benefit if safe and effective means of contraception were universally available. Yet more than 100 million women who want to limit of space their pregnancies are still without the means to do so.
There is an urgent need for a more integrated approach to women's health, including their reproductive health, their rights, their roles and status in society and their access to education, health and economic and political opportunities, where they continue to be discriminated against and treated as second class citizens.
These are among the issues of concern to us, at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Which I head.
UNFPA began its operations in 1969 and is the largest international source of population assistance. Our mandate is to assist developing countries and countries with economies in transition and other countries, at their request, in addressing reproductive health and population issues, and to increase awareness of these issues in all countries.
Our work is governed by the goals and principles of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo in September 1994, as well as the key actions emanating from the review of its implementation by the United Nations General Assembly Special Session in June/July 1999. The Programme of Actions, which is anchored in a human rights framework, has set specific objectives for all countries relating to health, women's status and social development. Through it, we affirm our commitment and to the autonomy and empowerment of women everywhere.
Our three main areas of work are: to help ensure universal access to reproductive health, including family planning and sexual health to all couples and individuals on or before the year 2015; to support population and development strategies that enable capacity-building in population programming; to promote awareness of population and development issues and advocate for the mobilisation of resources and political will to accomplish our work.
In carrying out our work, we are guided by the principle that all couples and individuals have the right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children, as well as the right to the information and means to do so.
We believe that providing high quality reproductive health care and education for girls and women improves their position in the family and society, contributes to national development and leads to family well-being, increased use of family planning and lower fertility and infant mortality. Our other special programme interests include youth and adolescents, ageing, HIV/AIDS, migration and population and the environment.
We also encourage men to support women's advancement and to take greater responsibility for their own reproductive behaviour. Political leaders and policy makers, community leaders and men in the family need to learn to value women as themselves, not as tools of demographic policy or means of bearing by children to continue to the family name.
We support only voluntary population activities and carefully monitor our programmes to ensure that activities we support conform to universally accepted standards of human rights. We recognise that coercion in any form is a breach of human rights.
We do not provide support for abortion anywhere in the world. We do, however, strive to reduce high levels of unsafe abortion and ill health by increasing access to family planning methods and enabling women to use reproductive health's services and information. We also work to end the public health threat of gender-based violence.
Funds for our work at UNFPA come from voluntary contribution. We are primarily a funding organisation. We work closely with other agencies of the United Nations system as well as with civil society organisations, including non-governmental organisations (CSOs), including women's and youth groups. An example of our co-operation with CSOs is the Initiative for Reproductive Health in Asia, which is the largest co-operation arrangement between the European Commission, UNFPA and the CSO sector.
In 1998, we provided support to 156 countries: 45 in sub-Saharan Africa, 43 in Asia and the Pacific, 34 in Latin America and the Caribbean and 34 in the Arab States and Europe.
In the Asia and the pacific region, which received just under a third (32.3 percent) of our resources for country programmes in 1998. Our assistance was primarily on the operationalizing reproductive health services, including adolescent reproductive health, with a focus on national capacity building. We have continues to support efforts made by most countries to revise or develop population and reproductive health policies, operational guidelines and reproductive health clinic and protocol standards and to integrate their reproductive health services. We also support extensive training programmes in reproductive health, information, education and communication, and counselling in a number of countries, including Pakistan.
On 12 October of this year(1999), the world is observing the "Day of Six Billion". Of course, we do not know the exact day-some experts have put it earlier this year. However, this will be a time for us at UNFPA to reflect on our past accomplishments and to chart our path for 21st Century.
Our 30 years in existence, we have seen a transformation in the field of population and development. In particular, the impact of reproductive health programmes in rapidly growing. Official support for family planning is virtually universal. Families are half the size they were in 1969, and population growth is slowing down. Acceptance that freeing people to make choices in their reproductive lives have made a difference. But experience has shown that more needs to be done.
As we approach the new Millennium, we plan to increase our efforts to address the reproductive health needs of all the world's population, and we call on all our partners to do their part in making this world a better place for all humankind.
