-will help guide Caribbean nations, including Guyana
HEAD of Office/Liaison Specialist at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Sub-Regional Office for the Caribbean/Guyana Adler Bynoe has revealed that at the end of this year, the UNFPA’s sub-regional programme that guides the many interventions and areas of support, comes to an end leaving room for a new cycle to begin from January 2027.
Describing it as an exhaustive process to develop, Bynoe stated that there have been several engagements to introduce a new programme. Once government endorsement is given, from January 2027 to 2031, the Sub-Regional Programme for the English and Dutch-speaking Caribbean and Guyana will become the guiding framework that influences the country programme that the UNFPA supports in each territory.
Targeting Guyana specifically, Bynoe said that the UNFPA has a strategic focus, which includes enhancing family planning efforts, particularly in Belize, Guyana, Jamaica and Suriname, and decreasing the numbers for maternal deaths, adolescent pregnancy, and gender-based violence.
According to Bynoe, efforts can be strengthened to ensure that these numbers are lowered regarding these issues.
Speaking on the vision for this document, Bynoe remarked, it “speaks to a Caribbean, including Guyana, of empowered, resilient women, girls, and young people, who throughout the life course, from during pregnancy, infancy all the way up to elderly stage, can fully exercise their sexual and athletic health rights, are free from all forms of violence and discrimination, and actively contribute to sustainable, equitable, and climate resilient societies. So ultimately, it’s to address all these needs of every individual that contributes meaningfully to the developmental processes.”
He explained that this is the vision they intend to work with for the next four to five years, with three strategic focus areas linked to that vision: demographic intelligence, advocacy and accountability, and social and gender norms transformation.
“When we speak of demographic intelligence, some of the priorities that we see potentially falling under this includes strengthening demographic data systems to generate, integrate, and disseminate disaggregated data from the next census round, and from administrative data as well. We do see a focus on demographic intelligence and full-set analysis, using all that data that is generated to inform policies, prime budgeting systems, and climate adaptation,” Bynoe explained.
Additionally, the UNFPA sees a focus on demographic intelligence full-set analysis, using the data generated to inform policies, prime budgeting systems, and climate adaptation.
Under advocacy and accountability, he said that a few priorities include strengthened policy, accountability frameworks, and health systems that would allow for issues around sexual and reproductive health rights, and gender-based violence prevention to be dealt with.
“And the third and final strategic output area is around social and gender norms transformation, and under this strategic priority, we’re hoping to focus on work around advocacy, the health and family life education programme that exists in school settings, as well as around strategic communications. Apart from the work in school settings around health and family life education, there’s also a comprehensive sexuality education programme that is heavily focused on outer school settings,” Adler noted.
Looking at Guyana, he said that there is also hope for strengthening mobilising multisectoral partnerships and coalitions that would further address sexual and reproductive health and rights, climate resilience, and citizen security.
“So, we do see ourselves over the next four to five years focusing on work around these areas, but, of course, this is a broad strategic focus. It still requires a little bit more engagement with the government here and other parliaments here to be able to hammer out a concrete Guyana country programme, that would be linked to this strategic focus and, of course, the government’s own development plans for that,” the liaison specialist added.
