Dear CSO Partners,
As you might be aware, the Commission on Population and Development, 58th session (2025), was held from 7-11 April, in New York on the theme of “Ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages”.
A resolution from the session on the theme would have been an expected positive outcome.
However, the CPD58 session did not result in a resolution.
The Asia Pacific Alliance for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (APA), the Asian-Pacific Resource & Research Centre for Women (ARROW), and the Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) have developed a statement in this regard, and we seek endorsements from civil society organisations. This statement is intended to be shared with critical stakeholders, including UN agencies and government.
We look forward to receiving your endorsement at the earliest.
Please read the full statement here:
The 58th UN Commission on Population and Development (CPD), held in New York during April 7 – 11 2025, was focused on ensuring healthy lives and wellbeing for all, a critical theme at a time when progress on health is stalling. The CPD is a critical body of the UN system to advance issues of population and sustainable development, especially in a world beset by multiple crises. It does this by overseeing implementation of the landmark Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and subsequent agreements from its reviews.
The ICPD Programme of Action is underpinned by commitments to fully realize both the right to development and reproductive rights. These rights obligate governments to ensure that all people have access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services as part of quality health services, including in crisis / conflict settings. Among the positive outcomes of the CPD, these links between the right to development including the right to health, and SRHR obtained strong support from a large number of governments.
However, despite weeks of negotiations, members of the Commission failed to achieve consensus on a resolution on the theme. Much of the blame for the lack of agreement can be placed at the feet of two member states—the United States and Argentina—which made it clear that they would not reaffirm the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or recognize the importance of sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights. For a body tasked with overseeing these commitments, an agreement that failed to uphold the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs or sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights would have been untenable.
The lack of agreement at the CPD comes at a time when countries and individuals around the world are facing serious threats to both their right to development and their sexual and reproductive health and rights. Financing for health systems is at a crisis point in many low- and middle-income countries, in part due to unsustainable debt burdens that place serious limits on governments’ fiscal space and investments in health. This in turn has resulted in stalling progress on universal health coverage, with little to no improvement since 2015 and ongoing increases in the proportion of the population facing catastrophic health expenditures. Reductions in foreign assistance from donor countries—including the sudden cessation of billions of dollars in global health funding from the United States Government—have increased the stress on health systems in many countries, causing serious disruptions in the provision of care and threatening the health and lives of millions.
At the same time, robust progress towards the realization of the sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls in all their diversity, is at risk of backsliding in a number of countries. Maternal mortality has declined by 40% since 2000 due to the implementation of the ICPD PoA and expansion of access to sexual and reproductive health services. However, between 2016 and 2023, progress has slowed, with stagnating rates in some regions and increasing rates in Latin America and the Caribbean.[1] Significant gaps, especially of access, remain in meeting women’s and girls’ needs for modern contraceptive methods. Few countries include the full range of sexual and reproductive health services within their essential services packages. In some countries, coverage is even being reversed. The growing influence of anti-gender and anti-human rights movements, both home-grown and imported in some countries, is evident in the passage of harmful and punitive laws and policies and political attacks on feminist and LGBTQ movements and organizations and their ability to organize and receive funding. These forces worsen the rising incidence of sexual and gender based violence, which is at crisis proportions due to structural inequalities including during conflicts. The need for strong leadership and collective action especially between Southern governments and feminist movements to address and overcome these challenges to the health and wellbeing of all is more urgent now than ever.
The CPD negotiations saw many governments from both South and North highlight the critical links between the right to development including the right to health, and SRHR. While there were some outstanding issues that needed further discussion, we are convinced that, excepting the US and Argentina, the remaining members of the Commission could have found common ground on issues that affect us all. These include issues related to food sovereignty and nutrition, sexual and gender-based violence, the need to provide support to families in all their diversity so that their individual members can thrive and fully realize their rights, and the need to ensure that adolescents and young people have the full range of information, education and services they need to ensure their health and well-being.
The Commission on Population and Development, with its unique mandate, is too important to fail. Moving forward, we call upon all governments to recommit to the full implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action, and the Key Actions document, with the right to development and sexual and reproductive health and rights as their cornerstones.
[1] Trends in maternal mortality estimates 2000 to 2023: estimates by WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank Group and UNDESA/Population Division. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2025.
Statement initiated by:
Asia Pacific Alliance for SRHR (APA)
Asian-Pacific Resource & Research Centre for Women (ARROW)
Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN)
You can endorse this statement either as an organisation or as an individual.