Twenty-five years ago, a global revolution started in Cairo when 179 world leaders met at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and recognized that individuals have a basic human right to make free and responsible reproductive choices. The ICPD Programme of Action stressed that women's empowerment is a precondition for development. Despite progress in Africa, the quest to fulfill the ICPD...

Fifty years ago, it was hard for women to obtain contraception and relatively easy to die giving birth. Many women were unable to decide whom and when to marry, and when or whether to have children. A worldwide movement to give women real choices in life culminated in the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), where a consensus was reached about the links between women’s empowerment, sex...

Displaced women, among them pregnant women, have lost critical health supplies including ante-natal care records, iron supplements and ARVs,which have been washed away with their belongings in flooding across two provinces.