ABSTRACT
The author was leading Egypt's National Population Council (NPC), a public entity where she oversaw the development and launch of a number of participatory national strategies, including a renewed effort to combat child marriage. The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) provided a framework for Egyptians to examine the country's population challenges and improve people's lives. It codified a landmark international consensus affirming that individual human rights and dignity, including the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls, are necessary preconditions for sustainable development. In the process of preparing for the post-2015 sustainable development goals, Egypt recently reassessed its progress across many sectors and uncovered a lack of coordination between vertically organized programs in family planning, health, education, and other services, along with a marked deficiency in the monitoring and evaluation of strategies, programs, and institutional capacity overall.
