The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) provides international leadership on population issues and is a key source of financial assistance for family planning and reproductive health programs in poor countries. Restoring U.S. funding for UNFPA programs is crucial to improving the health and lives of women and their families and to addressing demographic trends and promoting sustainable development.

Country stakeholders – governments, parliamentarians and civil society – have always been challenged by a limited ability to influence decisions made at the international level. With international donors now seeking to move decision-making and ownership to the country level, we have a remarkable opportunity to establish a transparent, participatory and inclusive process. This is particularly critical to the SRHR community which, due to the often controversial nature of the work, requires institutionalized processes as well as strong, well-informed champions, to ensure that its concerns are adequately funded in development strategies.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) offer precise targets for reducing poverty and promoting global development, but they remain incomplete if they do not build from and incorporate the objectives of other major international agreements, particularly those reached at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing). At the 2005 World Summit and in the years leading to the 2015 milestone, the sexual and reproductive health community is taking every opportunity to advance this message: universal access to sexual and reproductive health services is essential to achieving the MDGs.

In 1994, at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo, 179 nations endorsed an approach to improving reproductive health based on meeting individual needs and respecting human rights. They pledged to share the costs needed to make basic reproductive health care available to all who need it by 2015. Today, however, most donor and developing countries still fall short of paying their “fair share.”

At the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in 1994, the international community pledged to share the costs of reproductive health care in developing countries, estimated at US$18.5 billion annually by the year 2005. Donor nations committed to provide one-third of this total, or $6.1 billion. Donors still fall far short of this pledge, once inflation is taken into account, and actual resource needs are dramatically higher today.

In 1994, at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), 179 nations agreed on a plan for achieving universal access to basic reproductive health care by 2015. Today, vast differences remain in reproductive health status between rich and poor countries. The HIV/AIDS pandemic exacts a growing toll in human lives and threatens economic growth in some of the world's poorest countries. Donors focused on achieving the Millennium Development Goals – and concerned with poverty reduction, human rights, health and development – must help ensure the adequate flow of financial resources (referred to as population assistance) for sexual and reproductive health services.

Condoms Count, first published in 2002, tracks funding levels and the quantities of condoms provided to developing countries by donors, as part of its tracking of overall donor support to reproductive health programs and policies, including HIV prevention. This information is updated every two years in the form of supplemental data updates. The following are the highlights of the results of Condoms Count: 2006 Data Update.