UN Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs,
with support from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA)
|
| UN Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, with support from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) |
|
************************************************************************
The electronic preparation of this document has been done by the
Population Information Network(POPIN) of the United Nations Population
Division in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme
************************************************************************
AS WRITTEN
Implementing the Cairo Action Agenda
Joseph Speidel, M.D., M.P.H.
President, Population Action Intentional
The decisions and actions resulting from this conference are of
critical importance to the well-being of the planet and its people.
Our collective action—or inaction—will determine whether millions
of women and men continue to be denied the basic human right to have
only those children they want and to choose when to have them.
It will determine whether hundreds of thousands of women continue
to die each year from complications of pregnancy, childbirth, unsafe
abortion and, increasingly, from AIDS.
It will determine whether billions of people continue to live in
grinding poverty, subsisting on less than 52 each per day.
It will determine whether the North and South continue to degrade
the earth's basic biological systems through excessive consumption and
rapid population growth—or whether these systems will be preserved for
future generations.
The Programme of Action to be adopted in Cairo provides a
comprehensive and sound strategy for moving forward on all these fronts.
It represents an important step toward an international consensus on
population and development. The future of our children and grandchildren
depends on how effectively we put these fine words into action.
The greatest uncertainty relating to the conference relates to
whether the necessary resources will be forthcoming to implement the
programme that is adopted. Sufficient funds—and the political will to
mobilize them—are critical to the ultimate success of the International
Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).
So where do we go and what will it cost us to get there?
The individual must be at the heart of all development efforts. As
such we need to invest in human capital—in the knowledge, health and
welfare of individuals. Within this context, the focus of population
policies should be to improve the status of women—especially by
educating the young girls who will become the women and mothers of
tomorrow—and to meet the demand for family planning and reproductive
health care.
Within the area of reproductive health, two neglected areas
urgently need attention: family planning services for unmarried young
people and safe abortion. By the year 2000 there will be almost a
billion teenagers in the world, most of whom will become sexually active
during their teenage years. But at present, only the Western European
countrieswith contraceptive services. The result is an epidemic of
unintended pregnancy, abortion and sexually transmitted diseases among
young people worldwide.
Over the last ten years—since the 1984 population conference—a
million women have died because, lacking other choices, they resorted to
unsafe abortion rather than continue an unintended pregnancy. We must
deal forthrightly with the fact that one in four pregnancies ends in
abortion, for a total of about 50 million abortions each year. It is
long past time to provide the universal access to family planning which
will minimize the need for abortion and to make this common and
necessary procedure safe for those women who choose it as a last resort.
We must not be deterred by controversy. We must meet the need for
both reproductive health and reproductive freedom.
The key to successfully implementing the Programme of Action is
money. Developed countries enjoy a disproportionate share of the world's
income —they have a moral obligation to share their wealth and
technology. The international community has agreed that rich countries
should be providing about 0.7 percent of GNP for development assistance.
But only Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden are meeting or
exceeding this goal. On average, development aid currently represents
less than half of the recommended 0.7 percent level. 1 am sorry to say
the United States lags behind the other major donors in the share of its
GNP going to development assistance.
The donor community also has a poor track record on population
assistance. In 1989, the international community suggested at a meeting
in Amsterdam that rich countries should allocate four percent of total
development aid for population assistance. But only Norway has
consistently met this four percent guideline. On average, in recent
years, the donor community has spent only about one percent of total
development assistance on population programs. Similarly, the World Bank
has provided less than one percent of total annual lending for
population activities.
Recently, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United
States—as well as the European Union—have made major new funding
commitments. But other donors have yet to step forward.
The United Nations Development Programme is urging a "20/20 Compact,"
whereby donors and governments alike would boost social sector
spending to 20 percent of their budgets. This would enable health
budgets to expand a broad range of services for women and children and
education budgets to provide adequate funds for education, especially of
girls.
The ICPD Programme of Action has recommended that annual spending
for population programs reach $17 billion by the year 2000, to support
family planning as well as other related services such as basic health
care for pregnant women and efforts to prevent AIDS and other sexually-
transmitted diseases. The ICPD funding goals are ambitious relative to
current family planning expenditures, estimated at roughly $4 to $5
billion a year. Meeting these goals will require substantially increased
outlays from donors and developing country governments and consumers.
Meeting the ICPD goals will require donor countries to boost their
grant assistance from just $800 million in 1992 to about $5.7 billion in
the year 2000, or roughly one third of projected financial needs. The
World Bank and other multilateral lending institutions will need to
increase concessional loans for population from about $200 million to $1
billion annually. Even with these increased aid levels, governments and
consumers in developing countries will still need to increase
expenditures on family planning almost three-fold to more than $11
billion, to meet the goals identified by the Programme of Action.
Going beyond the funding guidelines laid out in the Programme of
Action, we could, for roughly $75 billion a year above current
expenditures, provide universal access to family planning, basic health
care for women and their children, and
universal primary education. All this for less than a nickel a day for
every person in the world.
The Programme of Action is an enlightened document, a document of
hope, and one on which our future quality of life depends. Working
together, we can summon the political will and financial resources
needed to make the action plan a reality. Our failure to do so will
impair the quality of life for generations to come. Our success will
make the world a better place for all posterity. Let's get on with the
work of raising more resources and expanding good quality services on
the ground.
Population Action International is a Washington, D.C., nonprofit
organization founded in 1965 that is committed to universal access to
voluntary family planning and reproductive health services, reproductive
freedom for women and men, and early stabilization of world population