Today, on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, calls on everyone to stand up against poverty by standing up for women’s rights and universal access to reproductive health.

Let us recognize that poverty is more than a lack of income. It is a lack of opportunity and choice. It is a lack of rights and resources, of social support, of voice and of power.

Every government has promised to work to end extreme poverty and hunger. They have also pledged to tackle the conditions that help poverty to sink its roots even deeper—conditions such as poor health, including poor sexual and reproductive health, and the lack of access to information and services. Governments have also promised to make sure that every child has an education, especially girls who are too often denied one, and that women and girls can live free of gender discrimination and violence with equal opportunity and equal rights.

Today, let us all stand up against poverty and urge governments to keep the promises they have made. The global fight against poverty requires the participation of everyone.

In joining forces with others, UNFPA focuses on the significant number of poor people, especially women and youth, who continue to lack access to education and health care, including reproductive health information and services. This keeps them trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty that runs from one generation to the next.

To help break this poverty trap, our shared efforts should aim at investing more in sexual and reproductive health, eliminating gender inequalities and empowering women to take control of their own lives. UNFPA believes that linking services for sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS, and ensuring universal access to both, will reverse the feminization and further spread of the AIDS pandemic.

By standing up for human dignity and human rights for all, including the right to sexual and reproductive health, we take a powerful stand against poverty.

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid Executive Director of UNFPA, United Nations Population Fund