Mr. President,

The Chinese delegation thanks Dr. Osotimehin, the UNFPA Executive Director, for his review of the work for the past year and his outlook for 2014. We appreciate the efforts made by UNFPA under the leadership of its Executive Director in preparing the new strategic plan, implementing the stipulated quadrennial comprehensive policy review of operational activities for development, promoting youth development and conducting review of progress made in achieving the goals set out in the ICPD Programme of Action, serving as its secretariat. We support the Fund’s priorities for 2014 as well as the 2014-15 biennial transitional evaluation plan, which is a subject for our deliberations at this session.

2014 marks the 20th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development. For many years, UNFPA has actively pushed for the attainment of the goals of the ICPD Programme of Action, with notable progress made. In recent years, in particular, it has played an outstanding role in organizing and coordinating deliberations on the goals of the ICPD Programme of Action beyond 2014. In November, 2013, the Chinese government and UNFPA co-hosted in Jiangsu Province, China the “International Meeting on the Monitoring and Implementation of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Beyond 2014”. From the five perspectives of “dignity, health, governance, security of place and sustainability”, the meeting held deliberations on the indicators for monitoring the implementation of ICPD POA, formulated new indicators for the monitoring framework for measuring the implementation of ICPD POA beyond 2014. The participants from various countries agreed unanimously that the successful meeting not only contributed to the evaluation of information provided for setting priority areas for future development and incorporating population dynamics, societal gender equality and production health into the development framework, but also reflected the Chinese government’s attention to enhancing its cooperation with UNFPA and attaining all the POA goals of ICPD.

The Chinese delegation hopes that UNFPA will continue to work on summing up and inform the member states in a timely fashion the outcomes of deliberations on the ICPD POA beyond 2014, including those achieved at similar meetings. While continuing to make related preparations for the successful convening of the GA special session this September on the follow-up on the ICPD POA, it should also continue to play a leading role in preserving the outcomes achieved, ensuring follow0ups and attaining all the goals as set out in the Programme of Action.

Mr. President,

China has always attached great importance to the population issue and has actively advocated the concept of long-term balanced population development and establishment of a society with a balanced population. China supports incorporating population into the post-2015 development agenda, believing as it does that the ICPD Programme of Action should remain effective in the long term and that the international community should be fully aware of the correlation between population dynamics, productive health and family planning, on the one hand, and sustainable development and poverty alleviation, on the other. It also believes that while being concerned with population size, the Fund should also pay attention to population quality, mix, distribution and migration, among others, with corresponding responses and strategies. We propose that UNFPA should, based on the requests of programme countries, comprehensively incorporate population policies and measures into the countries’ overall plans while continuing to strengthen coordination and communication with those countries to ensure stability and continuity during the transition and adjustment throughout the implementation of the new strategic plan, and effectively help with and push for balanced and sustainable development in developing countries.

Thank you, Mr. President.