The Nairobi Summit on the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD 25) was officially opened on 12 November 2019, with a call to accelerate the promise that was made in 1994 in Cairo. The summit presented a threshold of a new dawn in the ongoing fight for women and girls’ sexual reproductive health and rights.

The Conference discussed the unfinished business of the ICPD, marking 25 years since I79 countries, including Zambia, adopted the Programme of Action that recognised the relationships between population, development and individual well-being. For Zambia, the 2019 Nairobi Summit  mapped out a new 10-year vision, with fresh commitments on sustainable development.

Zambian Minister of National Development Planning, Hon. Alexander Chiteme, who lead the Zambian delegation, highlighted that Zambia has made large strides in implementing the 1994 Programme of Action, including a decline in preventable maternal deaths from 649 per 100,000 live births in 1996 to 278 per 100,000 live births  in 2018; and an increase in use of modern contraceptives from 9% in 1992 to 47.5 in 2018, among other milestones.

Hon. Chiteme further shared Zambia's 10-point commitments for the ICPD25 as summarised below:

Zambia Commitments:  Accelerating the Promise of ICPD

1. We commit to invest in primary health care, particularly health promotion, robust and sustainable healthcare financing mechanisms
2. We also commit to position Family Planning as a key development agenda for Zambia to Harness the Demographic Dividend
3. We commit to eliminate all forms of discrimination, and strengthen humanitarian preparedness and response
4. We further commit to strengthen equitable access to resources to reach the most vulnerable of our population
5. We commit to end all forms of discrimination against women and girls by domesticating international and regional instruments such as the CEDAW and SADC protocol on gender and development
6. We further strongly commit to end child marriage by taking all necessary measures to accelerate implementation of the National Strategy and other policy and legislative frameworks to end child marriage by 2030
7. We commit to promoting meaningful participation of adolescents and young people in national development by including them in development planning and implementation, monitoring and evaluation
8. Our Government further commits to promote people centered development in all sectors by integrating population dynamics into development planning at the national and sub-national levels, and enhance rural industrialization and development by advancing implementation as enshrined in our Vision 2030
9. We commit to promote generation and use of data to achieve sustainable development and make climate change a core part of economic development
10. We want to provide financing for the outlined commitments, and as such we pledge to create fiscal space  by broadening our tax base, exploring alternative financing mechanisms, and implementation of the debt sustainability strategy