Gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) are priorities of France’s approach to development cooperation. France is implementing a feminist foreign policy through its International Strategy on Gender Equality (2018-2022). By 2025, France aims to ensure that 75% of its ODA-funded projects enhance gender equality.
France’s leadership in advancing the rights of women and girls saw a highlight in June 2021, when France co-chaired the Generation Equality Forum in Paris - a global gathering to accelerate equality, leadership and opportunity for women and girls worldwide. France, together with UNFPA and other partners, co-led the Action Coalition on Bodily Autonomy and SRHR which made ambitious commitments, including on advancements in the fields of Comprehensive Sexuality Education, contraception and abortion services, SRHR decision-making and bodily autonomy, and women’s and feminist organizations and networks strengthening.
France is furthermore particularly committed to improving the health and wellbeing of women, newborns, children and adolescents in West and Central Africa via the French Muskoka Fund, implemented by France during the G8 Summit in Muskoka, Canada, in June 2010. As a Muskoka partner agency, UNFPA has largely benefitted from French contributions targeting its programs in the region.
Other specific areas of collaboration between France and UNFPA include support to gender-based violence services in Iraq and Bangladesh as well as to the UNFPA Supplies Partnership, which facilitates access to reproductive health commodities.