QUITO, Ecuador – Several senior journalists and officials from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) are now gathered at the Swissotel in Quito for a workshop on population and development issues in Latin America and the Caribbean.

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[naviga:li]· Population, territory and sustainable development in the Caribbean;[/naviga:li]

[naviga:li]· Investing in youth: Gaps in the universal access to sexual and reproductive health;[/naviga:li]

[naviga:li]· Indigenous peoples, territory and sustainable development;[/naviga:li]

[naviga:li]· Territory and public policies; and[/naviga:li]

[naviga:li]· Population and rural development.[/naviga:li]

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Among those scheduled to address tomorrow’s meeting are President of Ecuador Rafael Correa; the national secretary of the country’s Ministry of Planning and Development, Fander Falconi; UNFPA Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean Marcela Suazo; and ECLAC Executive Director Alicia Barcena.

The workshop — hosted by the UNFPA – is exploring several issues, including reproductive health and rights; maternal health; teenage pregnancy and prevention; sexual violence; population explosion and urbanisation; youth development; the social impacts of an aging population; and the status of implementation of the 1994 Cairo Programme of Action, which emphasises the numerous linkages between population and development and focuses on meeting the needs of individual women and men, rather than on achieving demographic targets.

Today’s workshop includes several video and oral presentations from regional officials of the UNFPA. It precedes tomorrow’s start of a three-day special meeting of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) ad-hoc Committee on Population and Development.

The main topic of the biennial meeting is ‘population, territory and sustainable development’ and the discussion will be centred on five priority issues: