Family planning experts launch task force in support of International Conference on Population and Development goals

"Gathered at the Ford Foundation in New York Monday, international luminaries, family planning experts and women's rights activists ... mark[ed] the launch of a new 26-member high-level task force to galvanize support behind the goals of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)," Inter Press Service reports. "That conference took place nearly two decades ago, in Cairo, Egypt, in 1994" and "resulted in a Programme of Action that become the guiding document for the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA," the news service notes.

IPS highlights the four global goals of the program, which "will celebrate their 20th anniversary in 2014," and notes that none have been reached so far. According to the news service, the goals include "universal access to education for all, including women and girls"; "reduction of infant and child mortality"; "reduction of maternal mortality"; and "access to reproductive and sexual health services, including family planning." At the event, Gita Sen, a professor of public policy at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore and a member of the new task force, discussed several reasons why the goals have not been met, such as a "rise of conservatism" in the United States, the news service notes (Bergdahl, 10/2).