UNFPA, Procurement Services Branch

UNFPA is the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency. Our mission is to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled.

UNFPA is formally named the United Nations Population Fund. The organization was created in 1969, the same year the United Nations General Assembly declared “parents have the exclusive right to determine freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children.”

UNFPA calls for the realization of reproductive rights for all and supports access to a wide range of sexual and reproductive health services – including voluntary family planning, maternal health care and comprehensive sexuality education.

Since UNFPA started its work, the world has seen progress: The number and rate of women dying from complications of pregnancy or childbirth has been halved. Families are healthier. Young people are more connected and empowered than ever before.

But too many are still left behind. More than 760 million people are mired in extreme poverty. Sexual and reproductive health problems are a leading cause of death and disability for women in the developing world. Young people bear the highest risks of HIV infection and unintended pregnancy. Many millions of girls face the prospect of child marriage and other harmful practices, such as female genital mutilation (FGM).

Much more needs to be done to ensure a world in which all individuals can exercise their basic human rights, including those that relate to the most intimate and fundamental aspects of life.

In 2018, UNFPA launched efforts to achieve three transformative results, ambitions that promise to change the world for every man, woman and young person:

• Ending unmet need for family planning
• Ending preventable maternal health
• Ending gender-based violence and harmful practices

Procurement Services Branch – PSB in particular

The objective of Procurement Services is to offer UNFPA's knowledge, purchasing capacity and expertise to our development partners, so that they can use their own financial resources and donor funds to procure reproductive health supplies. UNFPA Procurement Services is built on partnerships and is not for profit.

The significant volume of contraceptives procured annually allows our clients to access favourable international pricing. As the leading United Nations agency for sexual and reproductive health supplies, UNFPA invites partners in development to benefit from our unique knowledge base and market influence.