2010 Annual Report Shows Strong Donor Support for UNFPA

NEW YORK — Donor contributions to UNFPA and other income reached a record $870 million in 2010, up from $783 million a year earlier, according to the UNFPA Annual Report 2010, which also shows that 21 donors each made contributions exceeding $1 million and that the contribution from the Netherlands—UNFPA’s largest donor in 2010—totaled more than $119 million.

The contributions supported UNFPA projects and other initiatives in 155 countries, areas and territories in 2010 that aimed to promote gender equality, gather and use data to guide development programmes, prevent HIV, especially among young people, and empower women to make their own reproductive decisions.

In the introduction to the report, UNFPA Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin, who took over leadership of the organization in 2011, lauded many countries’ 

strides in 2010 toward better access to reproductive health. But he warned that progress “remains uneven across regions and income groups and within countries” and pledged continued support to countries pursuing the objectives of the International Conference on Population and Development’s Programme of Action.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called UNFPA’s work in 2010 “fundamental to our drive to reach the Millennium Development Goals” and improve the status of women around the world. “As poverty and other entrenched challenges are exacerbated by threats such as natural disasters, economic shocks and conflicts,” he wrote in the foreword to the report, UNFPA’s contribution “becomes even more indispensable.”

Highlights from UNFPA’s work in 2010:

• Support for censuses in 76 countries
• Emergency health care and services for mothers and newborns after the earthquake in Haiti and cyclone in Myanmar and prevention of gender-based violence after floods in Pakistan
• A new push by UNFPA and other United Nations agencies and the World Bank to help countries achieve Millennium Development Goal 5 to improve maternal health
• Provision of male and female condoms and reproductive health commodities valued at $63 million for 74 countries
• Publication of a new guide for engaging men and boys in gender equality and health
• The State of World Population 2010 ’s focus on sexual violence in conflict and humanitarian emergencies.