A/HRC/14/39 national midwifery standards and helping countries to scale up community-based midwifery practice.102 52. United Nations programmes and agencies also continue to assist countries in this area. UNFPA, UNICEF and WHO support nationally owned initiatives on maternal health in more than 90 countries. At the request of the Governments, UNFPA, UNICEF and WHO support these countries in taking the lead to strengthen their health-care systems and scale up efforts to deliver better health outcomes, particularly for persons living in poverty or in situations of vulnerability. UNFPA and WHO work with countries to ensure that sexual and reproductive health is fully integrated and prioritized into national frameworks and plans, and that corresponding resources are made available. UNFPA and WHO include maternal health as part of a package of interventions in the area of sexual and reproductive health, along with family planning. In 2008, UNFPA established the Maternal Health Thematic Fund aimed at increasing available funding to support the capacities of health systems to provide a broad range of quality maternal health services, reduce health inequities and empower women to exercise their right to maternal health. Assistance under this initiative has included technical and financial support to high maternal mortality countries to accelerate progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5. 53. Other service-related initiatives directly target risk factors, such as early marriages, female genital mutilation/cutting or HIV. The Berhane Hewan programme in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, where rates of child marriage and maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the world, follows a conditional cash transfer model by encouraging families to allow their girls to participate in the programme rather than to marry them off. Both married and unmarried girls in the programme develop functional literacy, life skills, livelihood skills and reproductive health education. Upon successful completion, the girls and families receive modest rewards. In Guatemala, the UNFPA-sponsored Abriendo Oportunidades programme also works with marginalized girls at risk of child marriage. Through the programme, the girls gain leadership, entrepreneurial and life skills, as well as information about gender equality and reproductive health. 54. In the context of its programme on Child and Adolescent Health and Development, WHO is working to strengthen the response of reproductive health programmes to adolescents in order to put in place a complementary set of actions aimed at preventing too early and often unwanted pregnancy, unsafe abortion and mortality resulting from it, and mortality during childbirth and the post-natal period. To this end, the organization is generating evidence, developing methods and tools, building capacity and consensus and strengthening collaboration. 55. In 2007, UNICEF and UNFPA launched a joint programme entitled “Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: Accelerating Change” with the objective of contributing to a 40 per cent reduction of the practice among girls aged 0–15 years, with at least one country declared free of female genital mutilation/cutting by 2012. The two agencies are also working with WHO, especially on stemming the trend of the medicalization of this harmful practice.103 Through a culturally sensitive approach, the joint programme fosters partnerships with government authorities both at decentralized and national levels, religious authorities and local religious leaders, the media, civil society organizations and the education and reproductive health sectors. 102 103 GE.10-12949 UNFPA response to the note verbale, p. 13. The joint programme is currently supporting action in 12 countries in Africa: Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda. See the UNFPA response to the note verbale, p. 13. 19