Helping Asia-Pacific meet development goals

Ministers and senior policymakers across Asia and the Pacific are gathered in Bangkok this week to focus on population dynamics at a crucial time for the region. Their goal: to keep people and their rights at the heart of the region's push for sustainable development. They will review how successful we have been in balancing economic growth with social imperatives, underpinned by rights and choices for all as enshrined in the landmark Programme of Action stemming from the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development.

In the Programme of Action, diverse views on population, gender equality, sexual and reproductive health, and sustainable development merged into a remarkable global consensus that placed individual dignity and human rights at the heart of development.

Truly revolutionary at the time, the ICPD remains all the more urgent and relevant a quarter century later, in this era of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with its Sustainable Development Goals. Without the ICPD we would not have the SDGs, and indeed they go hand in hand. The ICPD is a dedicated vehicle through which we can - and will - address, achieve and fulfill the SDGs.