Strasbourg 2004

The second IPCI/ICPD conference took place in Strasbourg, France, 18-19 October, and was organized by the Inter-European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development (EPF) and the UNFPA in collaboration with the Council of Europe.

At the conference, over 130 parliamentarians and ministers from 90 countries reaffirmed their responsibility to uphold the right of individuals to decide the number and spacing of their children, to empower women and to eliminate all forms of violence against them. At the closing, participants endorsed a strong set of commitments to advance the Cairo goals. They recognized that “the decision to defend these principles is the difference between a life with hope and opportunity and a life of despair and desperation. And worse, it is the difference between life and death itself.”