POPULATION-UN: Talks on Cairo Follow-Up Hit Snags

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 1 1999 (IPS) - Disputes over words like “reproductive rights” and “adolescent education” stalled this week’s preparatory talks on the follow-up to the 1995 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).

Delegates discussing progress five years after the ICPD in Cairo were set to wrap up discussions on Wednesday but conservative Catholic and Muslim nations held up any approval of language on reproductive rights – ensuring that the meetings dragged on into the night.

Still, a handful of delegations proved to be wary of any rights- based language which could represent a departure from the ICPD Programme of Action agreed to in Cairo.

Algeria objected to language about the sexual health of women and girls “free of coercion, violence and discrimination.”

Sudan meanwhile insisted on wording that would reiterate that the Programme of Action be implemented with respect for countries’ religious, ethical and cultural backgrounds – a key proviso for any issues involving women’s or children’s rights.

Similarly, Maria Consuelo Mejia, director of the Mexico-based Catholics for the Right to Decide, said that “we have observed a deliberate ploy…of using some Latin American delegations to delay the process”.

She accused Guatemala, Nicaragua and Argentina of taking some of the Vatican’s hard-line positions on abortion and reproductive rights to block any consensus on those issues, despite support for them by most developing nations.

Some diplomats said that the language disputes would not derail the wider agreement over the progress that has been made since Cairo.

“These are words and semantics,” said Dr Mohammed Amanullah, Bangladesh’s state minister of health and family welfare, of the disputes in several sessions of the preparatory talks on Tuesday and Wednesday. “By and large, people are quite agreeable.”

Amanullah conceded that the Holy See and other delegations had debated language over the application of reproductive rights, while many delegations preferred the words “reproductive rights” to “sexual rights.”

But on many other issues – including the need for greated financing of population activities by the developed world – the developing nations were unified, he said.

Nevertheless, many diplomats and UN officials doubted that the language disputes would be resolved any time soon.

Many women’s rights activists said that the rights-based language established in Cairo was now being “bracketed” for further review when governments meet to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the ICPD this June in a special session of the UN General Assembly.

“It would be a very hard and very complicated policy if the document gets to the UN special session with the brackets still in,” warned Sonia Correa, a Brazilian delegate of the Women’s Coalition for the ICPD, a grouping of 75 international non- governmental groups.

UN officials told IPS that it was possible governments could hold “inter-sessional” meetings between now and the end of June to clear up differences over language. If disputed language in brackets was not resolved by then, some women’s groups argued, time could be too short to come to any agreement.

Yet some activists said that many of the semantic quibbles that have held up agreement at the week-long preparatory committee session concern policies – such as equal rights for women or sexual education for adolescents – which are already being put into place in most countries.

“It is ironic that even in some of the delegates’ countries, the rights-based approach in Cairo is being implemented in policy and practice while they are here engaging in this deadlock,” Correa argued.

“There’s a disconnect between the discussions here and the actual policies on the ground,” said Bharati Sadasivam, director of the gender justice programme of the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation.

Some of the population officials in the countries involved, she contended, had been pushing for some of the rights detailed in the Cairo programme even though delegations present here questioned interpretations of the Cairo language.

“This has been all about semantics,” she argued.

Except for the rights dispute – which has been interpreted by the Vatican as an opening for abortion rights – and the issue of sexual education for children, there has been relatively little controversy over post-Cairo policies.

Both the nations of the North and South have agreed on the need for greater funding for population activities, although the industrialised countries have pushed for language making increased funding a universal goal.

So far, developed nations have provided only some two billion dollars out of five billion dollars earmarked from them for population activities in the ICPD Programme of Action. Meanwhile, most nations have pointed to increases in contraception, women’s rights, women’s health and other key Cairo goals since 1994.

“We are not going back in our countries,” argued Bene Madunagu, a women’s rights activist from Nigeria.

“The momentum that came out of Cairo set in motion an unstoppable process. This will not stop because a handful of delegates is trying to drag down the process.”