| The world is faced with various global
issues such as a rapidly increasing population, environmental
destruction, food shortages, poverty, lack of energy,
and poor distribution of resources. Addressing population
problems is essential to realize sustainable development
as population is closely related to all these global issues. |
| The Program of Action (POA) approved
by the International Conference on Population and Development
(ICPD) in Cairo, Egypt in 1994, marked a turning point
in considering population issues. The conference recognized
the value of formulating human-centered development policies
from a microscopic viewpoint, focusing on the life and
welfare of individual persons, rather than from a macroscopic
one. Along with this change, population policies have
been reformed from simply controlling population increase
to policies that emphasize women's
empowerment(enhancement of their status and abilities,)
men's participation, and the promotion of reproductive
health (RH) and gender equality (The
State of Women in the World) |
| JOICFP has been advocating microscopic
approaches to improve the health of women, children and
families and to develop communities through human-centered
family planning programs. JOICFP is continually making
more efforts to put the ICPD Program of Action into practice. |
| After ICPD, the roles of NGOs,
with their flexibility in implementing and facilitating
social reforms, especially at the grassroots level, are
more highly appreciated than ever before. JOICFP continues
to keep partnerships with relevant international organizations,
the governments of countries concerned and the Japanese
government to provide community people in Asia, Africa
and Latin America with sustainable, needs-oriented services
and to expand technical cooperation programs for them. |
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