The United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) was held 5–13 September 1994 in Cairo, Egypt. During this two-week period, world leaders, government officials, representatives of non-governmental organizations, and United Nations agencies gathered to negotiate a Programme of Action. The ICPD was preceded in 1974 by the World Population Conference at Bucharest and in 1984 by the International Conference on Population at Mexico City. With a broader mandate on development issues than had been the case at previous population conferences, ICPD delegates considered the interconnectedness of population, poverty, gender, patterns of production and consumption, and the environment. Perhaps the most powerful influence on the outcome of the ICPD was the increasingly strong voice of women's health activists who helped to bring reproductive health and women's rights to the forefront of the agenda. The 1994 Programme of Action recommends to the international community a set of important population and development objectives, including: - sustained economic growth in the context of sustainable development;
- education, especially for girls;
- gender equity and equality;
- infant, child, and maternal mortality reduction; and
- the provision of universal access to reproductive health services, including family planning and sexual health care.
Indeed, the Cairo conference codified views long advocated by women's health activists the world over. Their humanistic and feminist goals became cornerstones of Cairo's landmark accord, which recognized the rights of all people to reproductive health, called for special attention to women's empowerment and clients' needs, and repudiated reliance on contraceptive services as the tool for achieving demographic targets. The ratification of the ICPD Programme of Action marked a turning point in the history of the population field—one that brought reproductive health and women's rights to the forefront of the international population agenda.
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