During 1994, UNFPA, directed by Dr. Nafis Sadik, supported population programmes in 137 countries and territories. The Fund operates field offices, each headed by a country director, in 60 of those countries. The year 1994 will be remembered as the year the international community changed the way it looks at population issues. That change in perception actually evolved over two decades and culminated in the adoption of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, held at Cairo in September of that year.
The Programme of Action was the product of more than three years of intense deliberation and negotiation between Governments, non-governmental organizations, community leaders, technical experts and interested individuals. The Programme of Action goes beyond mere numbers and demographic targets and places human beings and their well-being at the centre of all population and sustainable development activities. It also sets out quantitative and qualitative goals and objectives to be reached by all countries by the year 2015: to provide universal access to reproductive health and family planning services; to reduce infant, child and maternal mortality; and to provide access to primary education for all girls and boys.
The Conference, and the Programme of Action it produced, spawned a series of internal and external assessments of UNFPA. For example, each UNFPA geographical division conducted internal reviews of existing policies and programmes and convened regional meetings to consider the implications of the Conference for their respective regions.
UNFPA held a series of joint workshops with partner agencies in the United Nations development system to examine how best to translate the recommendations of the Programme of Action into actions at the country and local levels. These workshops focused on the key areas of the Fund's programme -- reproductive health and family planning (with WHO); information, education and communication (with UNESCO and WHO); and population data, policy and research (with ILO) -- and involved advisers from the UNFPA technical support services/country support team system, including technical support services specialists from the respective United Nations agencies and organizations. These regional and technical consultations helped UNFPA assess the policy and programme implications of the Conference for the future work of UNFPA.
The programme priorities and future directions of UNFPA in the light of the Conference were considered by the UNDP/UNFPA Executive Board at its annual session in June 1995. The Executive Board, in its decision 95/15, supported the broad outline of the future programme of assistance of UNFPA, which must be implemented in full accordance with the Programme of Action of the Conference, and endorsed the Fund's core programme areas of reproductive health, including family planning and sexual health, population and development strategies, and advocacy. The Board also recommended, in its decision 95/20, that the Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly endorse the agreement between UNDP and UNFPA to designate UNFPA resident country directors as UNFPA representatives.
On 19 December 1994, the General Assembly adopted resolution 49/128, entitled "Report of the International Conference on Population and Development", in which it emphasized the importance of continued and enhanced cooperation and coordination by all relevant organs, organizations and programmes of the United Nations system and the specialized agencies, and requested them to take appropriate measures to ensure the full and effective implementation of the Programme of Action. In resolution 49/128, the Assembly decided that the Population Commission should be renamed the Commission on Population and Development and that it should meet on an annual basis beginning in 1996.
On behalf of the Secretary-General and at the request of the Administrator of UNDP, the Executive Director of UNFPA convened in December 1994 the first meeting of the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development. The meeting, attended by 12 United Nations organizations, worked to establish a common framework for follow-up to the Conference and other conferences in the social sector. The Task Force decided to use working groups to develop operational guidelines for use by resident coordinators to promote inter-agency collaboration at the country level in the following areas: (a) a common data system at the national level in the field of health, notably in the areas of infant, child and maternal mortality; (b) basic education, with special attention to gender disparities; (c) policy-related issues, including the drafting of a common advocacy statement on social issues; (d) women's empowerment; and (e) reproductive health.
To achieve the goals of the Conference, it is necessary to mobilize resources from Governments and non-governmental organizations. At the request of the Secretary-General, the Executive Director of UNFPA convened a consultation on resource mobilization on 20 January 1995. The participants suggested using existing mechanisms at the country level, such as the resident coordinator system, the World Bank consultative groups, and UNDP round tables, for the purpose of mobilizing country-specific resources. It was agreed that global consultation on this topic should be convened periodically, preferably at the time of the annual sessions of the Commission on Population and Development.
In conjunction with the International Conference on Population and Development and the World Summit for Social Development, UNFPA organized two international parliamentarian meetings, dealing specifically with population issues relevant to the themes of the conferences. Moreover, UNFPA established an NGO Advisory Committee to advise on how to make better use of and interact more effectively with non-governmental organizations and the private sector.
In 1994, UNFPA organized programme review and strategy development exercises in nine countries, providing useful inputs to the formulation of the country strategy notes. By the end of 1994, UNFPA had undertaken a total of 76 such exercises.
The Executive Board of UNFPA, in its decision 94/25, encouraged UNFPA, given the situation in Rwanda, to support, on an exceptional basis, in appropriate ways and in collaboration with other relief agencies, emergency assistance to the people of Rwanda from the population programme resources of the third UNFPA country programme for Rwanda. Subsequently, UNFPA approved a project in Rwanda for emergency/ rehabilitation assistance to the national maternal and child health and family planning programme, with UNICEF and UNFPA as executing agencies, and two emergency assistance projects to meet the reproductive health needs of Rwandan refugees in Burundi and the United Republic of Tanzania. The projects in Burundi and the United Republic of Tanzania, which were formulated in collaboration with UNHCR, UNICEF, the African Medical and Research Foundation and local non-governmental organizations, are progressing reasonably well. The Executive Board, in its decision 95/14, approved the continued implementation of decision 94/25, allowing for flexibility in sectoral expenditure of resources from the third UNFPA country programme for Rwanda and for overall expenditures of up to $7.8 million.
At the global level, UNFPA continued to support the Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction of WHO. UNFPA also participated in the United Nations Joint and Co-sponsored Programme on HIV/AIDS. The Fund's Global Initiative on Contraceptive Requirements and Logistics Management Needs in Developing Countries in the 1990s, co-funded by a number of multilateral and bilateral donors and non-governmental organizations, organized in-depth studies on contraceptive requirements in Brazil, Bangladesh and Egypt, generating interest by several other countries with regard to contraceptive requirements. The Global Initiative also produced technical reports and organized consultative meetings and workshops.
The income of the Fund in 1994 was $265.3 million, compared to a 1993 income of $219.6 million, an increase of 20.8 per cent (see fig. 12). Total expenditures for projects, from regular resources, increased from $134.3 million in 1993 to $204.1 million in 1994, an increase of $67.1 million, or 50 per cent. Expenditures for reproductive health and family planning programmes increased by 46 per cent, from $68.7 million in 1993 to $100.1 million in 1994, and accounted for nearly half of all of the Fund's project expenditures. Expenditures for information, education and communication activities increased by 80 per cent, from $21.3 million in 1993 to $38.3 million in 1994, and accounted for 19 per cent of total project expenditures. The remaining expenditures were divided among basic data collection (6.6 per cent); population dynamics (5.7 per cent); formulation, implementation and evaluation of population policies (8.1 per cent); multisectoral activities (5.5 per cent); and special programmes (5.4 per cent).
In 1994, the Asia and the Pacific region received 31.5 per cent of UNFPA programme allocations, the sub-Saharan Africa region received 31.1 per cent, the Latin America and Caribbean region 13.5 per cent and the Arab States and Europe 11.5 per cent. Support for interregional and global programmes amounted to 12.4 per cent of allocations.The Fund continued to concentrate over 71 per cent of its resources in countries most in need of assistance in the population field and notably in the poorest developing countries. In 1994, there were 58 priority countries for UNFPA assistance: 32 in sub-Saharan Africa, 17 in Asia and the Pacific, 5 in Latin America and the Caribbean and 4 in the Arab States.
To return to the Table of Contents