Representatives of 38 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean meeting this week in the Uruguayan capital urged governments in the region to consider modifying their laws on abortion, which are among the most restrictive in the world.

The Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development calls on “States to consider amending their laws, regulations, strategies and public policies relating to the voluntary termination of pregnancy in order to protect the lives and health of women and adolescent girls, to improve their quality of life and to reduce the number of abortions”.

The document was adopted at the end of the first session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, which ran Monday through Thursday.

Daptnhe Cuevas, of the Latin American and Caribbean Women’s Health Network, said their reaction to the outcome of the conference was “jubilation.”

Uruguay’s deputy minister of health, Leonel Briozzo, presided over the regional conference on population and development. Credit: Courtesy of the Public Health Ministry

We feminists came here with a series of clearly outlined proposals that were taken up integrally by the governments, which sent out a strong signal to the world that in Latin America, women’s rights are on the rise.”

Speaking with IPS just after the negotiations came to a close, the Mexican activist described the result as “a resounding success” and praised the governments for “rising to the demands.”

The Montevideo Consensus also urges the governments to “Ensure, in those cases where abortion is legal or decriminalised under the relevant national legislation, the availability of safe, good-quality abortion services for women with unwanted and unaccepted pregnancies”.

In Latin America, first-trimester abortion is only legal on demand in Cuba, Mexico City and, since 2012, Uruguay. In the rest of the countries, it is only allowed in exceptional cases – such as risk to the mother’s life or rape – or under no circumstances at all, such as in Chile, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

This week’s meeting, organised by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Uruguayan government with support from the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), also brought together 24 regional and international agencies and 260 non-governmental organisations.

The document contains over 120 measures concerning the eight priority areas to follow up the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo in 1994.

The recommendations will be the input of Latin America and the Caribbean to the meetings of the U.N. Commission on Population and Development and the General Assembly, to be held in New York in April and September 2014, respectively.

The participants in the meeting numbered over 800, which made it one of the largest intergovernmental conferences in recent years in the region, according to ECLAC.

Cuevas said central demands of the women’s movement were echoed. The final document reaffirmed, for example, the concept that “a secular state is an indispensable condition for the rights of women to be exercised.”

The Montevideo Consensus states that “a secular state is one of the elements fundamental to the full exercise of human rights, the deepening of democracy and the elimination of all forms of discrimination”.

At the close of the conference, Uruguay’s deputy minister of public health, Leonel Briozzo, said the agreement was a sign that “Cairo isn’t moving backwards, but forward.

“We significantly expanded on what Cairo set forth, and we did so from a diversity of viewpoints that were completely respected. As a region that carries the sobriquet of inequality, we are giving an example of democracy,” he said.

“We were able to reach an agreement where no one was trampled on and no one was ignored. This collectively-built construction reflecting agreement on more than 130 points was made by all of us together. It is ours, and it is for the world as a whole.”

The countries also agreed to apply a human rights approach with a gender and intercultural perspective when dealing with population and development matters.

They also committed to spend more on youth, especially in public education, and to implement comprehensive sexual and reproductive health programmes, with a priority on prevention of teen pregnancy.

In addition, they agreed to adopt measures to ensure better quality of life for the elderly.

Another stride forward underscored by Cuevas was the recognition of sexual rights and reproductive rights as separate concepts.

“We took another step forward by recognising them separately,” she said. “What was approved 20 years ago in Cairo referred to reproductive, but not sexual, rights.

“Information has advanced, we have clear concepts, and we know that sexual rights are not necessarily linked to reproduction,” she added. “They’re different issues dealing with different bearers of rights, and on this occasion we managed to get that reflected in the agreement.

“The discussions were very different from discussions at past conferences. I think the tone changed substantially, and it changed because women were seen as people of flesh and blood,” she said.

The declaration also clearly states, she said, “the right to sexual orientations and gender identities. Gender identity can be varied, and the effort had never been made to mention that in a regional accord. That was included for the first time; we had no precedent in any previous consensus, and it is very important.”

Teresa Lanza, head of Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir/Bolivia – the Catholics for Choice partner in Bolivia – told IPS that “the next step is for this to be translated into political will and big enough budgets to ensure that everything that was achieved here truly works and becomes a reality for all women in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

The activists attributed a large part of the advances made to Uruguay’s leadership. Cuevas said that “In the United Nations system, we generally find that the base document doesn’t really tread too much on anyone’s toes, and if you start to compromise, you won’t necessarily win.

“Uruguay set a high starting point, and that made less strident, ideological positions possible in the negotiations and dialogue,” she said.

Point 88 of the declaration calls on countries to “Respect and guarantee the territorial rights of indigenous peoples, including those of peoples living in voluntary isolation and those in the initial phase of contact, with special attention to the challenges presented by extractive industries and other major global investments”.

Chile had initially voiced reservations regarding this point.

Quechua activist Tania Pariona of the Network of Organisations of Indigenous Youth of Peru told IPS that “the work here was collective.”

“The states were fairly open to civil society,” she said. “There has been a good reception, a good vision of what is wanted for the future of the region, and that’s a step forward.”

Latin American demographers and government delegates analyse the region's population and development challenges in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 17 2013 (IPS)

Nearly 20 years after the landmark U.N. conference on population and development, the countries of Latin America have an opportunity to make headway with a new agenda on these issues, thanks to the favourable economic context that has made it possible to reduce social inequalities.

The situation in the region was debated at the preparatory meeting in Rio de Janeiro for the first session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, to be held Aug. 12-15 in Montevideo under the auspices of two specialised United Nations agencies.

Demographers and government representatives from the region were convened by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) to a Jul. 15-17 meeting that took stock of pending challenges from the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo in September 1994, which approved a plan of action to 2014.

The current context of economic growth and improvements in income distribution opens an opportunity for progress in the elimination of socioeconomic imbalances and improvement in quality of life, says the basic document by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Conference speaker Juan José Calvo, of the Uruguayan government’s population commission, agrees with this analysis of a Latin American population that over the last six decades has expanded from 167 million people to 596 million, according to 2010 figures.

“In the last 20 years we have seen extremely significant progress, in some cases giant strides, which does not mean that we do not still face big challenges, even in the same areas. In other words, we have lifted dozens upon dozens of Latin Americans out of poverty and extreme poverty, but that does not change the fact that it is still the main problem to be solved,” Calvo told IPS.

The ICPD programme of action recommended a set of interlinked quantitative goals, such as universal access to primary school education, with a special emphasis on girls; the promotion of health and reproductive rights, including family planning; the reduction of maternal and child mortality and morbidity rates; gender equality; and an increase in life expectancy.

In the framework of “sustainable development,” it took account of more general issues such as reduction of poverty and social, generational and ethnic inequalities.

In some countries these indicators improved, along with others that can help interrupt the cycle of inequality, like education. In Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, for instance, nearly all children and teens under 15 are in school, while on average in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, one-quarter of young people in that age range are out of the system, Calvo said.

Another stride forward was a rapid fall in fertility that began in the first half of the 20th century. Latin America and the Caribbean had some of the highest fertility rates in the world, at nearly six children per woman.

Four decades later, fertility in the region was below the world average of 2.9 children per woman, and in recent decades it has dropped to 2.17.

Since 1950, average life expectancy in Latin America and the Caribbean has increased by 23 years, to 75 years. During the same period, infant mortality plunged from 138 to 18 per 1,000 live births.

But these improvements are not evenly distributed among countries, regions or ethnic groups. “Latin America and the Caribbean remains the most unequal region on the planet, and that is probably its top priority challenge,” said Calvo.

“While we have made significant advances in most of the indicators that measure improvements in living conditions, there are still unacceptable gaps in sexual and reproductive health, poverty and education,” he added, referring, for example, to indigenous peoples.

Calvo said the basic problems could be traced back to the 1990s, when “the neoliberal governments that were predominant in the region gave up government planning as an instrument of public policies.”

At present, “several progressive governments have resumed planning, including demographic planning,” he said.

“Many have created social development ministries and institutes for young people and for women, for example, which are effective mechanisms for implementing more advanced regulatory frameworks,” he said.

However, not even these governments have been able to overcome internal conservative positions that hinder progress on issues like sexual and reproductive rights, regarded as “fundamental” by Brazilian demographer George Martine.

According to Elsa Bercó of Brazil, “fundamentalist” concepts blocked free discussion in Cairo of issues like sexual orientation, abortion and teenage pregnancy.

These issues “were not materialised in public policies or in the decisions of higher courts,” said Sonia Correa, the founder of the Brazilian women’s group SOS Corpo.

Martine told IPS that “In Cairo progress was made in terms of development, gender equity and reproductive rights, but not all of the agenda was discussed, and some touchier issues were left out of the debate for ideological reasons.”

He attributed this to “religious opposition, which is even capable of influencing governments whose own agenda is more progressive.”

Meanwhile, Magdalena Chu, the founder of the postgraduate course on Demography and Population at the Cayetano Heredia University in Peru, highlighted the region’s advances in sexual and reproductive rights.

“Nowadays there is more of a sense that people are free to plan their families, and to use this or that method of family planning,” she said. But she also blames conservative sectors for the fact that many governments have not been able to openly implement these policies.

Speakers at the meeting in Rio de Janeiro brought up other pending issues, like urbanisation processes and their consequences for the environment.

These are “inevitable” processes, but “there is a lack of policies on the part of administrators,” according to Martine.

“We have made advances on the road to development, but we still have a great deal to do,” Calvo summed up.