I congratulate Nobel Peace Prize recipients Dr. Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad for their remarkable efforts to stop rape and other forms of sexual violence as a weapon of war and to help survivors.

Executive Director Statement on the Occasion of the International Day of Older Persons - 1 October 2018

This is an important moment for UNFPA. Next year we will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development, ICPD. The regional review process is already under way. Last month I attended the Third Regional Conference on Population and Development for Latin American and the Caribbean in Lima, Peru – the first in a series of regional review meetings to be held between now and November. I would like to begin by posing two questions that I hope you will think about during our session this morning: First, what does ICPD mean to you and the women and girls in your country? Second, what should the ICPD mean for the next generation, for a 10-year-old girl today poised on the threshold of adolescence? 

Women and girls uprooted by war or disaster are at heightened risk of rape, exploitation and abuse. Yet reaching a refugee camp or other places where humanitarian services are available does not necessarily eliminate these risks.

As United Nations Secretary-General, he stood up for the rights, health and dignity of women and girls.

Statement by UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem on International Youth Day 2018 — We want to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and make good on our pledge to leave no one behind. We want to build lasting peace. Therefore, young people belong at the centre of our collective efforts.

Remarks by UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem at the Third Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean in Lima, Peru.

Should a disabled young woman or man be able to enjoy safe sexuality and keep well and healthy?

When I talk to young people, I tell them you are the U in UNFPA. If we want to live up to the ideals of the UN Charter, if we want to achieve the Sustainable Develoment Goals and if we want to build peace, then we have to put young people at the center. We have to embrace young people as equal partners on this journey together.

Today, on Nelson Mandela International Day, I hope that his legacy of equality and dignity will continue to inspire the world community, and will serve to guide future generations in the quest for social justice.

Fifty years ago, the world declared that “parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children,” at the United Nations International Conference on Human Rights in Tehran, on 13 May 1968.