POPULATION: UNFPA Praises Consensus on Post-Cairo Review

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 1999 (IPS) - UN officials voiced their elation Friday as governments here agreed to a wide range of proposals to advance the implementation of a population programme agreed to five years ago in Cairo.

The new proposals, officials said, represent a significant advance from the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Programme of Action. The proposals call for greater health and education spending, especially on women; for new steps to combat AIDS and promote reproductive health for the young; and for new measures to ensure that abortions are safe.

“I’m really happy with the outcome,” said Nafis Sadik, executive director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), on Friday. The proposals, she said, “really focus on the actions that need to be taken…They go further than the Cairo (Programme of Action).”

The language on safe abortions and adolescent sexuality had threatened to derail this week’s five-year review of the ICPD, as conservative Catholic and Muslim countries united against key passages of the ICPD review.

But diplomats participating in a working group on the review document clinched agreement on language on abortion and sex education Thursday night that satisfied many of the Muslim states that had objected, including Syria, Sudan and Libya.

The agreement was approved by acclamation at the conclusion of a special three-day session of the UN General Assembly on population and development, which ended Friday.

Only two nations – Nicaragua and Argentina – and the Vatican, which has observer status at the United Nations, continued to hold reservations against the text, in what was seen as a major victory for the United Nations in forging a strong consensus.

The successful conclusion of the talks shows that “there is a continuing commitment to population issues,” said Ambassador Anwarul Karim Chowdhury of Bangladesh, who chaired the working group. With the results, he said, “the mood of the international community has been picked up.”

Particularly elated were women’s rights groups, who helped win the passage of several major commitments to gender equality and abortion rights despite objections from traditionalist countries during the past several months of haggling over the review text.

In particular, governments agreed that “in circumstances where abortion is not against the law, health systems should train and equip health-service providers and should take other measures to ensure that such abortion is safe and accessible.”

It added that, although abortion should never be promoted as a method of family planning, “additional measures should be taken to safeguard women’s health.”

The key point, Sadik said, was that after “quite a long debate,” delegations had agreed to treat abortion “as a health problem” where the need to protect women was underscored.

The Vatican, by contrast, had argued that the effort to provide abortions that are “safe” was misguided since – in accordance with Catholic doctrine that life begins at conception – all abortions harm the “unborn.”

Yet in the end, only Nicaragua and Argentina made formal reservations to the consensus reached on Thursday.

Chowdhury noted that, despite their own objections, Muslim nations like Sudan and Libya joined the consensus without issuing any separate statements to underline their differences. Many of the Muslim states, sources said, were satisfied with the text after passages on adolescent sexuality included phrases that also asserted the responsibilities of parents.

The progress at the meeting underscored that, ever since 179 governments agreed to the Cairo Programme of Action five years ago, the tone of the population debate has changed.

Where before, governments avoided discussing family planning, now reproductive health issues are talked about in the same way as issues like clear water and air, said Joseph Chamie, director of the UN Population Division.

Yet although discussions may be more open, the money going to population programmes remains a thorny issue. Sadik urged governments on Friday to boost their funding for population activities so that the ICPD target of spending 17 billion dollars on specific population goals by the year 2000 could be met.

So far, developing nations, which under the Cairo plan were to chip in about 11.3 billion dollars in population activities by next year, have come up with 7.8 billion dollars, or about two- thirds. But industrialised nations have provided only about a third of the 5.7 billion dollar commitment they made at Cairo, earmarking some 1.9 billion dollars so far, according to UNFPA.

“The need for resources is paramount,” Sadik said. “All that is being asked for (from the developed world) is 5.7 billion dollars,” she added – an amount she described as “peanuts, peanuts, peanuts.”