UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Nafis Sadik, a Pakistani doctor who championed women’s health and rights and spearheaded the groundbreaking plan of action adopted by 179 countries at the 1994 UN population conference, has died five days before her birthday. 93 years old, his son said Monday night.
Omar Sadik said his mother died of natural causes at her New York home on Sunday night.
Nafis Sadik joined the UN Population Fund in 1971, became its Deputy Executive Director in 1977, and was appointed Executive Director in 1987 by then-Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar following the sudden death of her boss, Rafael Salas. She was the first woman to lead a major United Nations program that is voluntarily funded.
In June 1990, Pérez de Cuellar appointed Sadik Secretary General of the fifth United Nations International Conference on Population and Development in 1994, and she became the architect of its groundbreaking program of action that recognized for the first time that women have right to control their reproductive and sexual health and to choose whether to become pregnant.
The Cairo conference also reached consensus on a number of goals including universal primary education in all countries by 2015 – a goal that has yet to be met – and increased access for women to secondary and higher education. . It also set goals to reduce infant and child mortality and maternal mortality and provide access to reproductive and sexual health services, including family planning.
While the conference broke a taboo on discussing sexuality, it stopped short of recognizing that women have a right to control decisions about when they have sex and when they marry.
Natalia Kanem, current executive director of the UN Population Fund, called Sadik a “proud advocate of choice and a tireless advocate for women’s health, rights and empowerment.”
“Her bold vision and leadership in Cairo set the world on an ambitious path,” a journey she said continued at the 1995 UN women’s conference in Beijing and with the adoption of the UN development goals since 2000 that include achieving gender equality and many issues in the Cairo Program of Action.
Since Cairo, Kanem said, “millions of girls and young women have grown up knowing that their bodies belong to them and that their future is there to shape.”
At the Beijing women’s conference a year after Cairo, Sadik told delegates: “The first sign of respect for women is support for their reproductive rights.”
“Reproductive rights involve more than the right to reproduce,” he said. “They involve supporting women in activities other than reproduction, in effect freeing women from a value system that insists that reproduction is their only function.”
After her retirement from the Population Fund in 2000, Sadik served as Special Adviser to the Secretary General and Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Sadik will be remembered “for her significant contributions to women’s health and rights and population policies and for her tireless efforts to combat HIV/AIDS,” his spokesman said. . She “constantly drew attention to the importance of addressing the needs of women and of involving women directly in the formulation and implementation of development policies, which she believed to be particularly important for population policies and programmes” .
Born in Jaunpur, in British-ruled India, Nafis Sadik was the daughter of Iffat Ara and Muhammad Shoaib, a former finance minister of Pakistan. After receiving her medical degree from Dow Medical College in Karachi, she began her career working in the women’s and children’s wards in Pakistan armed forces hospitals from 1954 to 1963. The following year she was appointed chief of the health section of the government Planning Commission.
In 1966, Sadik joined the Pakistan Central Family Planning Council, the government agency responsible for carrying out the national family planning program. She was promoted to CEO in 1970.
She also completed an OB/GYN internship at Baltimore City Hospital and continued her medical education at Johns Hopkins University.
Sadik is survived by his five children, 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
“Mom loved how she lived: open, welcoming, wonderful, generous beyond belief, kind and generous, always and in every way,” Omar Sadik said. “Our house wasn’t huge, but her mom always found a way to make it seem limitless and she somehow managed to accommodate absolutely anyone who needed a bed, a couch, a meal or a family.”
“She transcended age and time and was so loved by people much older than her, as well as by little children, because they recognized her heart,” he said. “She Fitted In More In One Day Than Most Of Us Probably Fit In In A Year: She Was Peerless And Peerless.”
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