The Crown Princess is part of the newly created international panel, the High Level Task Force for the ICPD, which has its first meeting in New York tomorrow, 1 October.

The Crown Princess’s participation in the panel is an extension of her long-time engagement in the issues of maternal health and women’s rights and conditions as well as the Crown Princess’s work as patron of, among other organizations, the United Nations Population Fund, Maternity Worldwide, the Danish Refugee Council and WHO/Europe.

In the coming years, the panel will help to ensure the global fight against maternal mortality and promote women’s reproductive health, rights and access to family planning. From now until the 20th anniversary celebration of the so-called Cairo Programme of Action in 2014, the panel wants to contribute to the international attention and dialogue about women’s reproductive health and rights.

The most recent figures show that approximately 222 million women in developing countries still do not have access to modern family planning, and only half of the women in sub-Saharan Africa give birth with qualified obstetric assistance.

With the other members of the panel, the Crown Princess wants to raise awareness about, among other things, maternal mortality and women’s rights and opportunities.

The panel consists of 24 persons and is led by former Finnish president Tarja
Halonen and former Mozambique president Joaquim Chissano.