ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses some broad normative questions regarding the value and utility of UN global conferences in effecting normative change and nascent norm emergence. Later, it provides a summary on the process of normative change, as occurred in this particular issue area. Finally, it examines other avenues of research in this field. The United Nations obviously has a unique role in bringing together diverse actors who participate in the international public discourse and make international social and economic policy. Despite the fact that normative structures appear obdurate, actors can and do employ their individual and collective agency in attempts to change to various degrees the prevailing normative structure. Even though many changes were occurring in the field of international family planning prior to Cairo, Cairo was a benchmark in the sense that it defined the new norms that ought to guide global population policy. Advocacy on behalf of reproductive rights and health has, for some activists, become their life's work.
