UNFPA’s Arab States Regional Office is proud to announce the signing of two new partnerships linked to the Nairobi Summit on ICPD25.

The first partnership is with the Arab Women’s Organisation (AWO), a Cairo-based intergovernmental group set up in 2003 by the League of Arab States following the first Arab Women Summit in 2000. ASRO and the AWO started working together this year on an ongoing assessment on violence against older people, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2019. 

Violence is here understood in a broader sense by identifying barriers to services – including sexual and reproductive health services – due to age. The preliminary results of the AWO study are expected to be presented at the Nairobi Summit, and inform ASRO programming for the coming years. 

The second partnership is with the Union for Mediterranean (UmF), another intergovernmental organization that brings together 43 Euro- Mediterranean countries. The UmF was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Barcelona, Spain.

ASRO and the UmF began their collaboration as co-organizers of the 2017 Euro-Arab Youth Forum in 2017, which included a High-Level Partnership Meeting in Support of a Regional Strategy on Youth, Peace and Security in Arab States. UmF also took part in the first edition of the first Youth Forum in the Arab Region organized by UNFPA in December 2018.

This year, ASRO and the UmF co-organized a Regional Dialogue on Shared Views on Key issues in the Mediterranean from 22-23 May, 2019, and UmF will join the second edition of the Youth Forum in the Arab Region including the special event commemorating the 25th anniversary of ICPD to support youth knowledge innovations from 20-22 August 2019.