Kenya will from Tuesday host the International Conference on Population and Development which was first held in Cairo 25 years ago.
During the 1994 conference, 179 governments adopted a Programme of Action, which recognised that reproductive health, women's empowerment and gender equality contribute to sustainable development.
The conference meant to run till Thursday is organised by the Kenyan and Denmark governments to mobilise political will and financing needed to implement the ICPD Programme of Action.
Among those expected to attend include heads of state, ministers, parliamentarians, civil society organisations, grassroots organisations and young people.
Others include business and community leaders, faith-based organisations, international financial institutions, people with disabilities, academics and technical experts.
Matters to be discussed include universal access to sexual and reproductive health rights as part of UHC, financing to realise the programme of action and ending gender violence.
Delegates are also set to discuss upholding the right to sexual and reproductive health care even in humanitarian and fragile contexts and plans for demographic shifts to drive economic growth.
Sexual and reproductive health issues include ending maternal deaths, child marriage and FGM as well as women's reproductive rights such as abortion.
Promoters have also been pushing the sexual minority rights agenda including the LGBTQ.
The conference has, however, been met with resistance from religious and civil society organisations who claim it will erode African culture and kill the family unit by encouraging homosexuality, prostitution and abortion.
In a petition signed by more than 80,000 Kenyans and presented to the office of President Uhuru Kenyatta on Monday, the lobby group Citizen Go asked Uhuru to boycott the conference.
"The culture, Constitution and beliefs of Kenyans are against the spirit of this conference which has denied many people entry especially those who do not agree with their anti-life and anti-family agenda," Citizen Go's Campaigns Director for Africa Ann Kioko said.
UNFPA Country Director Dr Ademola Olajide said the purpose of the conference this year is to accelerate the commitments made 25 years ago. Olajide was speaking on Friday during a media sensitisation forum.
"It is important to get what ICPD was trying to look at those days. They were looking at the relationship between population and economic growth, gender equality and equity, reproductive health and rights and the family. Not much has changed, we are just looking at how to accelerate," he said.
National Council for Population and Development assistant director Beatrice Okundi said there is a relationship between population growth and economic development.
"A woman should be able to decide how many children she wants to have... having many children you cannot take care of increases poverty rates and declines economic growth," she said.
Okundi added that the conference is about more than sexual reproductive health rights.
"We also talk about fistula because of FGM, international migration, population and development, technology research and gender equality," she said.
Speaking in Nairobi last Friday during a forum to end FGM, President Kenyatta said the country is opposed to practices that undermine its culture and morality.
"We will welcome the visitors Nairobi. We will be there and we will listen. But we'll be firm in rejecting what we do not agree with," he said.
"We have a stand, but on things that do not conform with our cultures and religion, we will firmly reject."
Edited by R.Wamochie
