Background and objectives
1. Resolution 5.3, adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO at its twenty-sixth session (1991), authorized the Director-General to organize, jointly with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the first International Congress on Population Education and Development (ICPED) with a view to preparing the contribution of UNESCO in its own field of competence to the International Conference on Population and Development to be convened by the United Nations in Cairo in 1994.
2. The aims of the Congress were to review trends in population education worldwide over the past two decades, to adopt a Declaration on the role of population education in human development and to devise an action framework in this field on the eve of the twenty-first Century.
3. In order to prepare for this Congress, UNESCO had organized five regional meetings (Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Pacific, Arab States and Europe) between 1990 and 1992 as well as an inter-agency meeting in which more than 135 specialists from 85 countries and international organizations participated.
4. To mark the occasion of the Congress, the UNESCO Institute for Education (UIE) and the International Bureau of Education (IBE) produced a special issue of the International Review of Education and a bibliography on population education, respectively.
5. At the generous invitation of the Turkish Government, this first International Congress was held in Istanbul, from 14 to 17 April 1993.
6. Taking part in the Congress were ninety-one Member States, one observer mission, four United Nations Specialized agencies, four intergovernmental organizations, one non-governmental organization and two governmental agencies. It was attended by a total of two hundred and forty-five participants, including twenty ministers and five deputy ministers. The list of participants is attached.
Opening ceremony
7. On behalf of the Government of the Republic of Turkey, H. E. Mr Köksal Toptan, Minister of National Education, emphasized the importance of the first ICPED and welcomed all participants to Istanbul. The Congress was taking place at a historical turning point where investment in human development through better educational means was more crucial than ever in view of the rising expectations for individual welfare and increasing demands for a better quality of life for all. Considering the importance of major social and economic issues such as rapid population growth, rural to urban migration, environmental deterioration and the limitations of natural resources on human development and welfare and their impact on cultural change, he expressed his great appreciation for the joint effort of UNFPA and UNESCO towards the solution of these problems.
8. Mr Federico Mayor, Director-General of UNESCO, who next took the floor, thanked the Minister of Education of the Republic of Turkey for the generous hospitality offered by his Government and welcomed the persons of distinction and the ministers who had honoured the Congress with their presence, as well as all the participants and observers present at the opening ceremony. He in turn emphasized the timeliness of the Congress, in view of the fact that choices made in the next ten years would determine to a large extent the future habitability of the planet earth. The fundamental problem which had to be addressed in order to master escalating population growth was that of improving access to basic education, especially for girls and women. In association with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Bank, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), UNFPA and other partners of the World Conference on Education for All held in Jomtien (Thailand) in 1990, UNESCO was actively pursuing the task of promoting basic education worldwide. The themes of population, development, environment. democracy and human rights, together with others such as drugs and AIDS-prevention, were components of the education for the quality of life that UNESCO was promoting within the framework of the Education for All initiative and follow-up to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, Rio de Janeiro). This Congress, organized jointly with UNFPA, must contribute to the promotion of sustainable development by making it possible to pool experience in the field of population education and by identifying priorities, strategies and actions designed to develop, strengthen and institutionalize population education in the 1990s and beyond.
9. He stated that he wished to submit the conclusions of the Congress for endorsement to the General Conference of UNESCO at its twenty-seventh session and to present them to the Summit of the Heads of State of the Nine Most Populous Developing Countries (Delhi, November 1993), as well as to the International Conference on Population and Development to be held in Cairo in 1994. In conclusion, he paid tribute to Dr Nafis Sadik, who had provided such excellent leadership to UNFPA, expressed satisfaction at the very fruitful partnership that had linked UNESCO and UNFPA over the past twenty years, and said that he believed the partnership would be further strengthened in the years to come.
10. Dr. Nafis Sadik, Executive Director of UNFPA, greeted the participants on behalf of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr Boutros Boutros-Ghali. This Congress, she said, marked the coming of age of population education. As far as population issues were concerned, growth was still the dominant feature. The world population was increasing by one billion people every eleven years, and many developing countries could no longer meet the most pressing needs of ever-expanding populations. Agenda 21, the action plan for sustainable development, adopted by the Earth Summit (UNCED), set detailed goals for the twenty-first century in the areas of health, welfare and stabilization of population increase, and called for renewed attention to social investments. Those investments included education, maternal and child health care, family planning services and measures to improve the status of women.
11. In this context, fresh efforts should be made to provide more schooling for girls since experience showed that women's education was one of the strongest factors in reducing maternal and infant mortality and lowering fertility rates. Teaching responsible parenthood to both sexes created an environment where women's decisions about their reproductive preferences were respected. Efforts must now be redoubled to make certain that population education was carried out effectively in classrooms throughout the world. Every major curriculum reform, textbook revision and new teacher-training initiative should include
12. In her capacity of Secretary of the forthcoming International Conference on Population and Development, Dr. Sadik assured the participants of the importance of its conclusions.
13. Following the opening ceremony of the Congress, Mr Federico Mayor inaugurated the exhibition of educational materials prepared for the occasion. More than 500 books and publications relating to the topics discussed at the Congress and approximately 100 posters and audiovisual programmes from more than 50 countries all over the world and from United Nations agencies and other institutions concerned with this field were witness to the progress made in population education.
Organization of the work
14. During the first plenary meeting, the Congress elected by acclamation:
COMMISSION I
Vice-Presidents
Rapporteur
COMMISSION II
President
Rapporteur
DRAFTING COMMITTEE
President
Members
15. The President of the Turkish Delegation, H. E. Mr Köksal Toptan, Minister of Education of the Republic of Turkey, briefly referred to experiences Turkey has had in the field of population education. Minister Toptan stated that the family planning and population education activities were implemented in accordance with 1965 population planning and 1983 population laws as well as the integrated approaches envisaged in the five-year development plans. He stressed the importance of the activities related with sustainable development and of education as a strategy to achieve the goal of the desired rate of population growth and of developing a rational balance between population size and available resources to ensure a better quality of life for all people of the world. He also highlighted the importance of coordination between various government agencies and non-governmental organizations at the national level and emphasized the importance of international cooperation in this field.
16. The President of the Turkish Family Health and Planning Foundation, Mr Vehbi KOC, highlighted the importance of the role of nongovernmental organizations in promoting population communication and family planning activities, and shared a few of the experiences of the Foundation in this field. He stated that 75 per cent of the world's population. living in the high-fertility countries of the developing world obtained as their share only 25 per cent of world trade. Mr KOC emphasized the negative effects of rapid population growth on development effort, adding that although the average annual growth of gross national product (GNP) in Turkey was 5.5 per cent, almost half, 2.2 per cent of that growth, was offset by population expansion. As an illustration, a multimedia programme was presented on world population trends, Turkish population and the role of the Turkish Family Planning Foundation in promoting safe motherhood and family planning.
17. Before the end of the session, four prizes were awarded to the winners of a composition competition for promoting population education organized among school teachers.
18. During the debate in Plenary, two participants expressed disagreement with the logo selected by the Ministry of Education of Turkey for the Congress. They stated that the map included in the drawing was not acceptable according to the pertinent United Nations resolutions on Cyprus. One of the two participants concluded her statement by requesting that its content be included in the minutes of the Congress.
19. The representative of the Director-General of UNESCO took note of these statements and said that he could only abide by the practice and, a fortiori, by the resolutions of the United Nations, particularly those of the Security Council with regard to all such questions as those raised by this affair.
20. After the participant from the host country had presented her views on the substance of the Congress, she referred to the statement made in the previous paragraphs and explained the views of her Government. However, she underscored the fact that the painting used in the logo was the view of a graphic designer from her country.
21. Returning to the Agenda and introducing the work of the Congress, the Assistant Director-General for Education, Mr Colin Power, stated that population growth was one of the most serious impediments to development today, and the single largest obstacle to the achievement of Education for All (EFA) by the year 2000. Population growth was not just a problem of increasing poverty, growing number of illiterates, overgrazing, soil erosion and destruction of rain forests; population pressure also tended to produce other problems such as regional conflicts, flow of refugees from one country to another and great pressure on developed countries to admit emigrant from poorer countries.
22. The World Conference on Education for All defined the purpose of population education as that of helping people to understand the impact of population change on their lives and to develop the decision-making skills they would need to cope with their population situation and to improve it. Such population education could help people to improve the well-being of their families and communities, and it could have an especially important impact on women in society. He recalled Dr Sadik's statement made at the inaugural meeting that there was no better investment than in the education of girls and women.
23. Population education has gradually gained acceptance as an important part of the curriculum in most countries of the world. He pointed out that, however, much still needed to be done if this relatively new field was to become both institutionalized and strengthened substantively to the point that its impact could be felt over a long-term period. There were new challenges to be met in terms of its conceptualization, consolidation and institutionalization and its expansion to encompass all levels of formal and non-formal education in all countries. It was particularly important that the message should be internalized in the nine most populous countries. For this reason, UNFPA and UNESCO together would target the population issue in the Summit of the Heads of State of the Nine Most Populous Developing Countries.
24. After noting that population education had been introduced at various levels of education in different countries, he commented that there was, however, a need to reconsider the importance of introducing and strengthening population education at the primary and university levels. The early school years were an important period when attitudes and values were formed, and when school attendance was at its highest. Population education should, therefore, find an entry into the content of the first 4,000 hours of instruction in basic education under the programme of Education for All. At the basic and secondary level, the effort made by UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) to crystalize the basic knowledge required into a succinct number of Facts for Life represented one approach to the core curriculum which needed to be built.
25. At the tertiary level, universities were expected to take up a leadership role in training, research and extension activities in population education so that it could become fully institutionalized in the education system as a whole. Faculties and Colleges of Education were closely connected with what went on in the schools by virtue of the functions they discharged in relation to school education.
26. He went on to say that teacher education was an important prerequisite for the successful implementation of population education programmes, but the challenge of training teachers was enormous. Most teachers had received little or no training and were therefore ill-prepared to handle the content of population education effectively in view of the millions of teachers who needed to be trained, cost-effective strategies, including distance education and the use of the media, had to be devised.
27. During the past two decades, UNESCO's action within the field of population education could be considered at three complementary levels: firstly, in contribution to the devising of concepts and methodological approaches; secondly, its contribution to its advancement and consolidation of population education; and thirdly, its contribution to the development of capabilities at the regional and national levels. In the next biennium (1994-1995), population education would be given a further impetus in the Programme and Budget of UNESCO through the establishment of a new interdisciplinary and inter-agency project: Environment and Population Education and Information for Human Development.
28. Mr Power concluded by stating that population education was a relatively new dimension within the broad field of education, which was still approached warily by Governments, and by educators and the public at large. Population education should be seen as an educational and culturally sensitive response to the social and economic problems which confronted us individually and collectively.
29. The congress then began its work through three main channels: