By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Nov 9 1999 (IPS)

Targets set five years ago at the UN’s International Conference on Population and Development will not be fulfilled due to the “drastic reduction” in aid for family planning, according to an official of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Rainer Rosenbaum, director of UNFPA for Cuba says that, at the present rate of population growth, the world will miss “by a long shot” the objectives planned for 2000 during the population conference on such issues as reproductive health, education, health and family planning.

Delegates of the 179 countries who met in Cairo in September 1994 calculated that to meet those goals, it would be necessary to invest 17 billion dollars annually until the year 2000 – the exact sum the world spends each week on arms.

At the time, it was agreed that two-thirds of the funds (11.3 billion dollars) would come from developing countries and one- third would be donated by industrialised nations.

“Five years later, the industrialised countries have granted one-third of the promised amount, while developing countries have given about two-thirds of the amount that they pledged,” Rosenbaum said.

The United States, the world’s only super power, “made promises without keeping them…and other nations paid very late,” he added.

Most contributions have come from the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway, to the latest State of the World Population, published this year by UNFPA.

The report reveals there are 350 million women around the world who lack access to contraceptive devices, and the majority of the 585,000 women who lose their lives each year from complications during pregnancy and childbirth could be saved.

Each year, 70,000 women die from botched abortions and more than 330 million women report being infected with a sexually- transmitted disease.

UNFPA argues that a large part of this suffering could be prevented if there is wider access to family planning services, greater availability of information and better policies that guarantee reproductive health.

The agency “does what it can,” according to Rosenbaum, but accomplishes less and less because of the consequences of the reduction in aid.

The agency decided to give priority to the countries with the most critical situations, and in September, froze all the projects that were being carried out in Brazil. The reduced budget for Mexico was 35 percent less than at the start of the nineties.

Rosenbaum told IPS at a recent UNFPA meeting in Havana that “the financial ceiling” for projects in Cuba used to be one million dollars a year but has dropped to 350,000 dollars.

“For a country like Cuba, it is a shame. We have barely enough for a few visits. The five projects underway by UNFPA have been clearly affected, and two are practically gone,” he says.

Between 1975 and 1995, UNFPA gave the island more than 17 million dollars to execute 27 projects on reproductive health, the island’s changing demographics, and education and information on population issues.

A study by the Research Centre of the World Economy, connected to the University of Havana, considered UNFPA’s aid to Cuba to be “modest, but stable,” and noted that from 1990 to 1996, it increased by 6.9 million dollars.

In 1996, UNFPA established a new cooperation model with target countries, based on three categories of need. Group A includes nations in dire need of aid, most of which are in Africa. In Latin America, only Haiti and Nicaragua are among those with the highest priority.

Category B lists nations with genuine advances in population policies, and Category C, which includes Cuba, contains countries that are not deemed to require major assistance.

Statistics on the island indicate low infant and maternal mortality rates, a life expectancy of more than 75 years, and negative population growth since 1978. In addition, the government guarantees universal access to health and family planning services.

Abortions have been available at the mother’s request in every gynecology and obstetrics office since 1965, but there is evidence that it is sometimes used as a method of birth control.

On the other hand, there are high rates of teenage pregnancy and a growing incidence of sexually transmitted diseases, including the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).

Specialists predict that Cuba’s positive health achievements could deteriorate, due to the combination of the economic crisis that has plagued the island since 1990 and the impact of the United States blockade.

Dr. Miguel Sosa, an official with the Ministry of Public Health, stresses that one of the consequences of the cutbacks in UNFPA aid is a reduced access to high-quality contraception devices.

The scarcity of resources will seriously impact on the agency’s previous efforts to provide much-needed reproductive health products and to finance the circulation of educational materials.

A factory, built in collaboration with UNFPA to produce oral contraceptive pills, faces problems stemming from the lack of money to buy basic materials.

“After 25 years of work in the United Nations, I have found that Cuba has one of the best resource allocation systems,” says Luis Gomez Echeverri, a UNFPA representative and resident U.N. coordinator in Cuba.

“With few resources, one can do so many things. They (they agency) must be convinced that the budget for Cuba should be increased instead of cut,” added the official, who is spending some eight weeks on the island.

Rosenbaum supports seeking alternative financing through South- South cooperation, private initiatives and policy alliances with governments, in order to “put our heads together and mobilise additional resources.”

“The situation is doubly serious. We are facing a deteriorated, damaged system of multilateral cooperation that is under attack, but neither are we receiving bilateral aid for the population cause,” the official said.

Excerpt: