UNFPA is the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency. Our mission is to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.
UNFPA is formally named the United Nations Population Fund. The organization was created in 1969, the same year the United Nations General Assembly declared “parents have the exclusive right to determine freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children.”
UNFPA calls for the realization of reproductive rights for all and supports access to a wide range of sexual and reproductive health services – including voluntary family planning, maternal health care and comprehensive sexuality education.
UNFPA Supports:
- Reproductive health care for women and youth in more than 150 countries – which are home to more than 80 per cent of the world’s population
- The health of pregnant women, especially the 1 million who face life-threatening complications each month
- Reliable access to modern contraceptives sufficient to benefit 20 million women a year
- Training of thousands of health workers to help ensure at least 90 per cent of all childbirths are supervised by skilled attendants
- Prevention of gender-based violence, which affects 1 in 3 women
- Abandonment of female genital mutilation, which harms 3 million girls annually
- Prevention of teen pregnancies, complications of which are the leading cause of death for girls 15-19 years old
- Efforts to end child marriage, which could affect an estimated 70 million girls over the next 5 years
- Delivery of safe birth supplies, dignity kits and other life-saving materials to survivors of conflict and natural disaster
- Censuses, data collection and analyses, which are essential for development planning