Emergency reproductive health kits being offloaded for distribution to health facilities in Ethiopia.
Improving lives in East and Southern Africa
We work to improve people’s quality of life in the 23 countries of East and Southern Africa. Our target population groups are women and young people. We initiate and support development programmes in partnership with governments, agencies and civil society.
Our aim is to speed up progress to meet Millennium Development Goal 5 A and B by 2015 and the goals of the Programme of Action adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development. These set defined targets for promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing maternal mortality, improving maternal health, and combating HIV/AIDS and other diseases.
We help mothers live
UNFPA helps governments to deliver sexual and reproductive health care throughout a woman’s life cycle. We advocate for the right of all people to voluntarily decide the number and timing of their children. We support programmes that ensure reliable supplies, improve access and affordability, and promote the acceptance and utilization of family planning services. We promote maternal health, which includes good care for pregnant women and safe childbirth, to safeguard the lives of mothers and their newborn babies. 
More
We help empower youth
UNFPA’s four key strategies for empowering young people and protecting them from sexual and reproductive health problems, including HIV, include incorporating youth issues into national development and poverty reduction strategies, expanding access to gender-sensitive sexual and reproductive health education that encourages the development of life skills, promoting a core package of health services and commodities for young people, and encouraging youth leadership and effective participation in policy dialogue and quality programming. More
We help ensure everyone is counted
If a country is to see to its people’s needs, the government needs a full set of facts and figures to understand the population dynamics, chart the trends and plan for the future. This allows it to build sound policies and generate political will to appropriately address the nation’s needs – now and in the future. UNFPA assists countries in every aspect of this task, from developing capacity in data collection, analysis and utilization, to participating in national, regional and global policy dialogue. It includes migration, ageing, climate change and urbanization.
More
We help prevent the spread of HIV
As a co-sponsor of UNAIDS, we focus on HIV prevention among young people, women and marginalized groups, including sex workers. We support comprehensive programming for male and female condoms. We advocate for the linking and integration of sexual and reproductive health and HIV policies, programmes and services.
More
We help empower women
UNFPA tackles four elements of gender inequality and violations of rights – girls’ education, women’s economic empowerment, women’s political participation and the balancing of reproductive and productive roles. Gender equality was selected as one of the eight Millennium Development Goals, which shows the level of importance women’s empowerment has for progress in development. While a goal in itself, gender equality is also a driver for all the MDGs. This is because it is intimately linked and specifically connected to goals to improve maternal and newborn health, and to reduce the spread of HIV.
More
We provide humanitarian assistance in emergencies
Within the interagency response to disasters, UNFPA takes the lead in providing supplies and services to
promote reproductive health, emphasizing the special needs and vulnerabilities of women and young people. Both groups can figure prominently in rebuilding communities. UNFPA supports various data collection activities in humanitarian situations to provide detailed information for planning and rapid health assessments to allow for appropriate, effective and efficient relief. We also assist stricken communities as they move beyond the acute crisis stage and enter the reconstruction phase. More
Our areas of expertise
The areas we work in are interlinked. They are sexual and reproductive health, reproductive health commodity security, HIV and AIDS, gender equality,
population and development, adolescents & youth, and humanitarian emergencies.
