PARC Manager Dr Susan Jim was at the House of Commons last week with Dr Tigist Grieve, Lecturer in Social Policy, School for Policy Studies, attending the launch of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)’s 2024 State of World Population (SWP) report “Interwoven Lives, Threads of Hope: Ending inequalities in sexual and reproductive health and rights”.
The University has a strategic partnership with the UNFPA and it was an opportunity to build on PARC’s close relationship with UNFPA London Representation Office (LRO) and consider its future direction. Dr Jim said:
“The University has been working closely with UNFPA since 2018 through the UNFPA LRO with its inaugural Director, Matt Jackson. Since then, as the UNFPA LRO became more established and PARC was launched at Bristol, this partnership has deepened to include engagement of our researchers and students in UNFPA projects and campaigns, PhD student internships at the LRO and Bristol as a founding member of TransformU. I am excited to attend this SWP launch to learn about the progress in our ICPD commitments since last year and to meet the wonderful UNFPA LRO team and their new Director, Monica Ferro, to discuss future initiatives.”
UNFPA’s 2024 report uses the 30th anniversary of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) as an opportunity to reflect on how far we have come in achieving sexual and reproductive health and rights for all, and where there is further work required.
PARC have worked closely with UNFPA Kenya on our capstone programme on realising African countries’ ICPD25 commitments to end gender-based violence, an aim that aligns with UNFPA’s overarching goal to eradicate GBV by 2030, part of Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG5).
More broadly, Bristol’s mutually beneficial partnership with UNFPA has enabled University research to be connected to relevant conferences and parliamentary discussions, and to be profiled in TransformU, the UNFPA’s university network, of which the University is a founding member.
