The year 2019 marks a double anniversary to commemorate 25 years of the groundbreaking International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and to celebrate UNFPA’s 50th anniversary. In 2019, UNFPA Country Office in Georgia also celebrates the 20-year anniversary of its support to the country’s development.
The UNFPA Country Office in Georgia was established in 1999. Since then the UNFPA Georgia team is actively working to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe, and every young person's potential is fulfilled. By promoting sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, advocating for gender equality, strengthening the policy frameworks and systems, striving for the elimination of harmful practices and combating violence against girls and women, supporting youth development, collecting quality data on population dynamics and supporting their application for planning the country’s sustainable development, UNFPA is making a strong contribution to the advancement and development of Georgia as a democratic state.
The presence of UNFPA in Georgia is linked to many initiatives, such as: the launch of first reproductive health mobile teams in the beginning of the 2000s with the purpose of providing free and quality reproductive health and family planning services to the population, which helped to save the lives of hundreds of women for 12 years of their operation; four nationwide surveys on reproductive health; elaboration of the National Maternal and Newborn and Reproductive Health Strategy and the Action Plan; introduction and support to the innovative cervical and breast screening program; improved HIV prevention; introduction of peer education for youth on the issues of reproductive health, HIV prevention, gender equality, gender-based violence; support to the state’s multisectoral response to domestic violence and violence against women and girls; support to the prevention of harmful practices (early marriage, gender-biased sex selection, female genital mutilation) and refining the law on child/early marriage; cooperation with religious confessions for strengthening prevention of domestic violence and harmful practices against girls and women; enhancing men’s engagement for achieving gender equality and supporting the MenCare campaign, winner of the “Emerging Europe Award”; strengthening the Office of Public Defender for monitoring sexual and reproductive health and well-being within the frameworks of the human rights monitoring system; capacity building of the National Statistics Office for improving the collection and analysis of reliable population data; elaboration of comprehensive demographic and population aging policies, and advocacy for healthy aging, etc.
Having the partnerships with state agencies, NGOs, private sector organizations and religious confessions, various field experts, activists, artists and athletes, UNFPA Georgia team directly supports the realization of fundamental human rights and actively continues its operations for making the individuals, their rights and choices central for sustainable development.
