By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 12 1996 (IPS)

The United Nations’ ability to provide leadership in the sensitive areas of population and reproductive health is being hampered by political and financial constraints, according to Population Action International (PAI).

Shanti Conly, director of policy research at PAI, said one of the primary reasons for this is the perception — held by many U.S. politicians — that the United Nations is “ineffective and poorly managed.”

In a recent study, however, the Washington-based, non- governmental organisation points out that critics miss the mark when they “indiscriminately lump all U.N. organisations together.”

Conly singled out four U.N. bodies — the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), the U.N. Children’s Fund, the World Food Programme and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees — as “widely considered to be better managed and more effective” than the U.N. Secretariat and its specialised agencies.

If the UNFPA is to take the lead in population activities, it has to step up efforts to increase its funding, Conly told IPS.

The United States was the largest single donor until 1985, providing nearly 30 percent of UNFPA’s funding. But due to political pressure from anti-abortion groups, U.S. funding has declined, from 35 million dollars in 1995 to less than 5 million dollars in 1996.

Washington withheld all support to UNFPA from 1986 to 1992, as a result of political attacks by abortion opponents critical of UNFPA’s presence in China.

Although President Bill Clinton restored funding in 1993, U.S. contributions have sharply fluctuated, and reflect no real increase when compared with its support in the early 1980s, leading Conly to describe Washington as “an unreliable partner.”

Alex Marshall of the UNFPA told IPS that although there has been a general decline in overall development assistance, funding for UNFPA has been increasing, despite U.S. cutbacks.

“We are in a fairly healthy situation because we have established our credibility in the donor community,” he said.

But Marshall admitted that U.S. funding cuts have hurt UNFPA in a way that prevents it from providing “as much assistance as it would like to.” The uncertainty of U.S. funding, he said, “ties our hands at a time when our needs are great.”

The agency’s funding, however, is not growing fast enough to reach the goals set at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in 1994, he noted.

PAI agrees that implementing the Cairo plan will require “dramatic increases in funding by both developed and developing countries.”

Currently, annual expenditures on family planning programmes in developing nations amount to between 4 billion and 5 billion dollars. But according to the ICPD action plan, the anticipated demand for basic reproductive health services in the year 2000 could cost as much as 17 billion dollars, of which 10 billion dollars will be needed for family planning services alone.

Marshall said the ICPD estimates are “not guesswork but realistic figures” arrived at by the donors themselves. “It is up to them to come up with the necessary funds,” he added, noting that about one-third of the 17-billion-dollar total is to come from donor countries.

In its report, ‘Taking the Lead: the United Nations and Population Assistance’, PAI appealed to the donor community to provide more money to UNFPA to intensify its population programmes in developing nations.

“The UNFPA, with its history of evolution and responsiveness, holds more promise than many other U.N. agencies,” Conly said.

Although 85 countries contributed to UNFPA in 1995, five countries — Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, the U.S. and Germany — accounted for two-thirds of the 293 million total.

Over the past 27 years, UNFPA has provided more than 3.4 billion dollars in grant assistance to 167 countries.

“If UNFPA is to meet the challenges it faces, it must have more consistent support from the donor community — including the U.S. and other lagging donors,” according to Conly.

Conly said cuts in development assistance also threaten the ICPD action plan. “We think this is a great tragedy because the UNFPA came out of the Cairo conference with a vision, a purpose and direction,” she added.

Increasing global funding for population programmes will be one of the critical challenges facing UNFPA, the PAI report says.

PAI urges UNFPA to assume the role of “chief population adviser” to governments seeking assistance, and it recommends that UNFPA work more closely with the World Bank, given the Bank’s access to top political leaders and influence on policy.

Additionally, PAI recommends that UNFPA apply its limited resources more strategically, taking into account the needs of countries requesting assistance, UNFPA’s ability to meet those needs, and whether UNFPA’s presence and activities will have a significant impact.

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