This article provides an overview of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in 1994. Specifically, it focuses on the international developments that led to the conference, the various restrictions on reproductive rights found throughout the world at the time of the conference and their relation to the overall problem of population growth, as well as the substantive content of the agreement reached at the conference, and the factors that can foster the implementation of the conference's plan of action.