From family planning to sexual and reproductive health and rights: Reclaiming the ICPD Agenda for Africa's sustainable development.

The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo in 1994, fundamentally transformed global thinking on population and reproductive health. Moving decisively away from the demographic targets and fertility-reduction strategies that had dominated previous decades, the ICPD Program of Action (PoA) established a comprehensive, rights-based framework that placed women and men - not population numbers - at the centre of development. It recognized sexual and reproductive health as a fundamental human right and affirmed that every individual has the right to attain the highest possible standard of sexual and reproductive health, make informed reproductive choices, enjoy bodily autonomy, and access quality health services without discrimination, coercion or violence.