POPULATION: Money, Reproductive Rights Mark UN Debate

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 25 1999 (IPS) - Commitments by industrialised countries to fund population activities worldwide and questions about reproductive rights figure high on the agenda of a series of meetings now underway at the United Nations.

The week-long talks began Wednesday at the preparatory committee for the fifth-year review of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).

They are intended to forge a consensus on issues like funding and reproductive rights before a special meeting of the UN General Assembly on population issues in June.

Nafis Sadik, executive director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) said Wednesday that she hoped the meetings could follow up on the ICPD Programme of Action agreed to five years ago in Cairo by discussing resource allocation in coming years and efforts to decrease maternal mortality rates.

“The mortality levels have not really gone down,” she warned.

According to UNFPA, some half a million women die each year of pregnancy-related causes. Sadik argued that governments must find epidemiological reasons for such dramatic levels of morbidity and develop programmes to reduce risks for mothers.

Some of the issues up for discussion, however, are thornier than others – including the funding issue, where many developing nations believe that their progress in expanding population activities has not been met with the fulfilment of donor nations’ promises to increase their financial assistance for them.

“Delegation after delegation mentioned that Cairo had two sides to commitments,” said Bangladeshi Ambassador Anwarul Karim Chowdhury, who presided over the preparatory meetings that began Wednesday.

On the one hand, he said, developing nations have felt that they have met their commitments to develop population programmes; but on the other, he added, assistance from donor countries “became stagnant in 1996-97 and then started to taper off”.

According to UNFPA, donor countries boosted their contribution to population in the immediate aftermath of the Cairo conference, to two billion dollars in 1995 alone.

But since then, official development assistance (ODA) to the South has fallen to a mere 0.24 percent of developed nations’ gross domestic product – well below the target of 0.7 percent the donors had set.

Of that amount, the proportion spent on population assistance itself has lagged behind, comprising slightly less than 2.5 percent of all ODA going to the South in 1996. Sadik noted that a decade-old proposal by developed nations to earmark 4 percent of ODA for population activities would be “one way to increase resources”.

As the debate began in the preparatory committee, some donors – including the United States, the largest single donor – pledged to do more to reduce the funding gap.

“There is no question that overall resources for development are limited,” said Julia Taft, assistant US secretary of state for population, refugees and migration. “We must ensure that existing resources are used as effectively and efficiently as possible,” she added.

The other topic looming over the debate is that of reproductive rights, with several nations prepared to contest te broader interpretation of reproductive rights detailed in the Cairo agreement.

Chowdhury said that in cases “where some interested delegations felt they lost out at Cairo”, there could be an attempt to push interpretations of the ICPD Programme of Action that are more restrictive on reproductive rights.

At the same time, he doubted that any significant change in the Cairo consensus would occur. “We are not supposed to re-open in any way the language of Cairo,” Chowdhury noted. “That was very hard-earned, well-earned language and we are to respect it.”

In any case, Sadik argued, the discussions are not meant to push any particular interpretation of the ICPD results. “It’s for each country to decide for itself,” she said of the Cairo language.

Still, Sadik noted several areas where conservative delegations, including the Holy See, are pushing for restrictions.

Some conservative states are seeking constraints on the use of “emergency contraception”, including birth-control pills which can be used within 72 hours of intercourse, which UN officials have used in refugee camps to prevent unwanted pregnancies from rapes and other causes.

Similarly, Sadik said, some delegations are objecting to the use of the female condom, contending that such technology is not completely reliable in protecting women from unwanted births.

“Well, if you don’t use anything, you will not be protected,” Sadik countered. “To say (the female condom) should not be made available is incomprehensible.”