As the United Nations reproductive health and rights agency, our mission is to deliver a world in which every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled—a world in which every woman and girl lives a healthy life and has reproductive rights, and is free from violence and fear. We curate conditions and provide solutions for women and girls to live in dignity and thrive throughout their lives.

In 2018, UNFPA Bangladesh and our partners supported the Government of Bangladesh in delivering on our ambitious agenda, working tirelessly to reach the most vulnerable women and girls in the country with a view to transforming their lives and future.

As a result, new midwives have been educated, equipped with new skills and deployed— safely delivering babies, improving maternal health even in the remotest areas of the country and securing family planning needs. We have also helped find ways to prevent and support healing from gender-based violence.

With our partners, we have helped spark advocacy and action leading to new laws and policies, creating the necessary conditions for positive changes to be realized. We have collaborated to enhance institutional capacity to deliver integrated and equitable sexual and reproductive health services, respond to gender-based violence, and target investments for adolescents and youth. Our support in generating quality population data in a user-friendly format has been instrumental.

Our intent is to not leave anyone behind. We have reached women and established offices in tea gardens, in refugee camps, in brothels and in other hard-to-reach areas of Bangladesh.

UNFPA Bangladesh has also played a key role in providing life-saving sexual and reproductive health and rights and gender-based violence prevention and response care to Rohingya refugees, leading the gender-based violence sub-sector coordination, and responding to over 10,000 incidents of gender-based violence by deploying trained volunteers to administer mental health and psychosocial support to survivors, along with more than 100 UNFPA-trained midwives to help over 300,000 women in need at safe spaces and mobile reproductive health clinics.

Our gender-balanced UNFPA team with staff from 17 countries is our greatest asset, bringing diversity and a wealth of experience to tackle complex challenges. We serve tirelessly and with dignity and respect in all our interactions, pooling our individual unique talents and perspectives to enable our team to deliver essential development solutions. The results we have achieved have been made possible through the strong support of our donors and partners—the Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, civil society organizations, national and international non-governmental organizations, academic institutions and UN agencies.

We extend our sincere appreciation to all our donors and partners. Thank you for entrusting your resources to us. Continue to hold us accountable. Indeed, reproductive health and rights are smart investments in continuing to promote quality growth, and in leading Bangladesh to a future in which all the Sustainable Development Goals are realized.

Going into 2019, we look forward to celebrating the 25th anniversary of the groundbreaking International Conference on Population and Development and the 50th anniversary of UNFPA, with even more success and sustainable impact on the lives of the marginalized and vulnerable. Just as the country we serve, Bangladesh, is resilient and beautiful with a warm humanitarian heart, so we aspire to be.