International Conference on Population and Development Fact Sheets

In 1994, at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), 179 countries came together and adopted a Programme of Action, in which they agreed that population policies must be aimed at empowering couples and individuals — especially women — to make decisions about the size of their families, providing them with the information and resources to make such decisions, and enabling them to exercise their reproductive rights. For the first time in an international consensus document, states agreed that reproductive rights are human rights that are already recognized in domestic and international law.