Adopted by 179 governments, the ICPD Programme of Action marked a fundamental shift in global thinking on population and development issues
It moved away from a focus on reaching speci c demographic targets to a focus on the needs, aspi- rations and rights of individual women and men The Programme of Action asserted that everyone counts, that the true focus of development policy must be the improvement of individual lives and the measure of progress should be the extent to which we address inequalities