Thank you Madam President, and thank you Executive Director Kanem for bringing these issue to us in such a tangible and human way.
We thank UNFPA for its continued determination to elevate the health and wellbeing of women and girls in all their diversity. For more than 50 years, the United States has worked alongside UNFPA to help drive tremendous progress in improving sexual, reproductive, and maternal health outcomes worldwide. In 2022, the U.S. collaboration with UNFPA reached new heights through our successful Partnership Consultation.
Last November, leading experts from the United States and UNFPA gathered to discuss ways to strengthen collaboration and coordination around addressing youth and adolescent health, maternal health, essential reproductive health supplies, gender equality, and gender-based violence (GBV). The discussion also focused on our significant efforts to improve population data, including through joint support to national censuses around the world.
At this exchange, we highlighted our new policy on Engagement Principles on Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and Sexual Harassment (PSEAH) within International Organizations. This initiative is enhanced by our dedicated support to UNFPA’s work in strengthening the PSEAH capacity of international organizations in humanitarian emergencies. This includes UNFPA’s development of a SEA module for the IASC’s GBV Case Management Guidelines, and its building of a robust cadre of PSEA coordinators.
At the consultations, we previewed advances in the U.S. flagship humanitarian GBV prevention and response initiative – Safe from the Start Revisioned and reaffirmed our strong support to UNFPA’s mandate on prevention of and response to GBV within humanitarian contexts. We also welcomed, as a major step forward, UNFPA’s leadership role on the sexual and reproductive health task force within the Global Health Cluster. UNFPA’s enhanced capacity in this cluster will better ensure humanitarian responses recognize and prioritize the lifesaving impact of sexual, reproductive and maternal health services from the onset of an emergency. We congratulate you on your efforts to support even greater numbers of women-led organizations in these contexts and hope this trend will continue.
Thank you.
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