On 12th May, Thoraya Obaid, UNFPA Executive Director, and UN Under-Secretary General, spoke with Japanese parliamentarians at the 21st Regular Reproductive Health and Rights (RH/R) Study Session.

Obaid first thanked MPs Chieko Nohno and Yoko Komiyama for their support in the All-Party Parliamentarians Study Group on Reproductive Health, before talking about how UNFPA is promoting RH toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

She gave Bangladesh as an example of where maternal mortality and morbidity had been significantly reduced by:

• Increased access to family planning
• More skilled attendance at birth
• Increased access to emergency obstetric care,

and she stressed that women all over the world needed this.

Obaid highlighted this by pointing out that although fistula had been virtually eliminated 100 years ago in industrialized nations, some 2 million women a year in the developing world are afflicted by it. She mentioned the UNFPA global Campaign to End Fistula, and the successes it was showing in places such as Bangladesh.

In speaking about HIV/AIDS, Obaid emphasized the need for women’s empowerment and reducing their vulnerability to the infection, such as through promoting the use of condoms.

Obaid told the parliamentarians that UNFPA had been working to ensure that RH was fully integrated into national development strategies and poverty reduction strategies to achieve the MDGs, and she requested that the parliamentarians work toward Japan’s funding of UNFPA to at least be returned to the 2001 level.

In a question and answer session, Obaid was asked about how she felt about the use of medication that ran the risk of strong side effects. Obaid answered that UNFPA was very particular about which private companies it contracted medicines from, and that companies were carefully vetted before any partnership commenced.

Obaid (front right) with Safiya Cagar, Director,
IERD, UNFPA, and MPs, UNFPA Tokyo staff,
and JOICFP staff