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WHO/Europe’s key strategic policy tool is the WHO European regional strategy on sexual and reproductive health, developed in 2001 in close collaboration with health ministries and other partners. Countries can use it as guidance in developing and reforming their reproductive health services in the health system.

Many countries have used it to develop their own national strategies, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Ireland, Kyrgyzstan, the Republic of Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, the United Kingdom, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Kazakhstan, Romania, the Russian Federation and Spain are developing strategies.

The World Health Assembly approved a global reproductive health strategy in 2004. It targets five priority aspects of reproductive and sexual health:

• improving antenatal, delivery, postpartum and newborn care;
• providing high-quality services for family planning, including infertility services;
• eliminating unsafe abortion;
• combating sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, reproductive tract infections, cervical cancer and other gynaecological morbidities; and
• promoting sexual health.

Other international commitments

In 2000, countries committed themselves to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and set out a series of time-bound targets with a deadline of 2015: the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

MDGs 3–6 are particularly relevant to health, and MDG5 is a commitment to improve maternal health. Target 5B was added in 2006 and is a commitment to universal access to reproductive health.

Other United Nations conventions and summits resulted in many commitments related to sexual and reproductive health, including: the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) of 1994 and the Beijing Declaration and platform of action of 1995.