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) |
|
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT
Cairo, Egypt
5-13 September 1994
ICPD INFORMATION KIT -- STORY 1
CAIRO CONFERENCE LINKS POPULATION, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND
WOMEN'S RIGHTS
The international community's response to population and
development challenges over the next several years will greatly
affect the quality of life of present and future generations.
Action to empower women and promote gender equality will be
particularly crucial.
The world's population, now almost 5.7 billion, is growing at
a record pace of more than 90 million persons a year. Many of the
resources on which future generations will depend are being
depleted at alarming rates and pollution is intensifying, driven by
wasteful consumption, the unprecedented growth in human numbers,
persistent poverty, and social and economic inequality.
At the same time, at least half a million women are dying each
year as a consequence of pregnancy and childbirth; 99 per cent of
those deaths, almost all of them preventable, occur in developing
countries. In some countries, as many as half of maternal deaths
may result from unsafe abortions; many others result from the
absence of the most basic antenatal, maternity and post-natal care.
Some 460 million couples in the developing regions of the
world (55 per cent of the total) use some method of family
planning. However, approximately 350 million couples do not have
access to a full range of modern family planning information and
services. It is estimated that 120 million women not currently
practising contraception would use a modern family planning method,
if one were available, affordable and acceptable to them and to
their husbands.
These are among the issues that will be taken up at the 1994
International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), to
be held from 5-13 September in Cairo, Egypt. Delegations from some
180 countries are expected to participate in finalizing and
adopting a 20-year Programme of Action focusing on population,
sustained economic growth and sustainable development, with special
emphasis on women's health, education and status.
A central theme is that efforts to slow population growth,
reduce poverty, achieve economic progress, improve environmental
protection, and reduce unsustainable consumption and production
patterns are mutually reinforcing.
Convened by the United Nations, ICPD is a successor to the
1974 World Population Conference, held in Bucharest, and the 1984
International Conference on Population in Mexico City. Those
gatherings spelt out actions to address issues related to rapid
population growth, and affirmed that all couples and individuals
have the right to decide freely and responsibly the number and
spacing of their children, and to have the information, education
and means to do so.
This year's Conference will build on and broaden that
consensus, reflecting the widespread recognition that population is
inextricably linked to the full range of human development concerns
-- including poverty alleviation, women's empowerment and
environmental protection.
ICPD will emphasize two themes: choices and responsibilities;
and the need to incorporate population considerations into all
national and international efforts to achieve sustained economic
growth and sustainable development.
The overall aim is to identify actions -- and to find the
means of implementing them -- that will make national policies and
programmes more effective in meeting individual needs, especially
those of women, and in bringing population into balance with
available resources.
As part of a holistic approach that emphasizes the health,
education and empowerment of women, a major focus of the Conference
will be to increase the availability of family planning as part of
a broader package of reproductive health services. Closely related
to this objective are Conference goals to significantly reduce
infant, child and maternal mortality, and to expand access to
education, particularly for girls.
URGENT NEED FOR ACTION
The past 20 years have seen remarkable demographic, social,
economic and political changes, as well as changes in attitudes
about reproductive health, family planning and population growth.
Death rates have also been lowered, and education and income
levels, including those of women, have increased, often
significantly. As political commitment to population policies and
family planning programmes has solidified, many countries have
substantially expanded access to reproductive health care and
reduced their birth rates.
Progress, however, has been uneven. In Western Europe, North
America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and much of East Asia,
access to family planning is almost universal; between 65 and 80
per cent of couples practise contraception; and the average family
size is near or below two children per couple. But in most
sub-Saharan African and some Pacific Island countries, for example,
family planning services are not yet widely available;
contraceptive use there is below 15 per cent and women bear an
average of six or more children.
Infant mortality world-wide has dropped by one third since
1974, from 92 deaths per 1,000 births to 62. But a large gap
remains between developing countries (with 69 infant deaths per
1,000 births) and developed countries (12 deaths per 1,000 births).
While levels of education have risen considerably during the
past two decades, an estimated 960 million persons are illiterate,
two thirds of them women. Some 130 million children, including over
90 million girls, are denied access to primary schooling. This
impedes progress in every sphere of development, including changes
in patterns of human reproduction.
Women's roles and status are changing in many countries. Women
are entering the labour force in record numbers, a trend that is
contributing to the rising demand for family planning services. But
women are often the only source of support for themselves and their
children. Everywhere, female-headed households are the poorest of
the poor, in part because women have less access than men to
training, credit, property, natural resources and better-paid jobs.
In addressing these social concerns, developing countries find
that demographic changes are placing increasing strains on services
and infrastructure.
By 2015, nearly 56 per cent of the global population is
expected to live in urban areas, compared to under 45 per cent in
1994. The urban population of developing countries is projected to
reach 50 per cent by 2015, up from 26 per cent in 1975. Lower death
rates imply that developing countries will soon have to provide
services to far larger numbers of elderly persons; while reduced
infant mortality combined with high fertility has resulted in
youthful populations in many countries, ensuring continued rapid
population growth for decades to come.
How the world's nations address -- or fail to address -- these
multiple concerns over the next two decades will have an enormous
impact on the quality of life of all living and future generations.
In particular, the level of performance in meeting unmet needs for
family planning and other Conference goals in the next 20 years is
likely to determine whether world population in the year 2050
reaches 7.8 billion people (the United Nations' lowest projection)
or goes as high as 12.5 billion (the high projection). The medium,
or most likely projection is for 10 billion in 2050.
CONFERENCE PREPARATIONS
With such considerations in mind, the UN Economic and Social
Council in 1989 decided to convene ICPD in 1994 (ECOSOC resolution
1989/91). Dr. Nafis Sadik, Executive Director of the United Nations
Population Fund (UNFPA) was appointed Secretary-General of the
Conference. Since then, a Preparatory Committee, open to all United
Nations member States and a number of other States, has guided
advance efforts for ICPD.
The Committee's first session in March 1991 defined the
objectives and themes of the Conference -- population, sustained
economic growth and sustainable development -- and identified six
clusters of priority issues: population, environment and
development; population policies and programmes; population and
women; family planning, health and family well-being; population
growth and demographic structure; and population distribution and
migration.
At its second session in May 1993, the Preparatory Committee
agreed on a provisional structure for the Conference Programme of
Action. It instructed the Conference Secretariat to prepare a draft
of the final document, to be debated at the Committee's third and
last session (PrepCom III) from 4-22 April 1994.
In drafting the document, the Secretariat drew on
recommendations of various gatherings, including: five regional
population conferences (for Asia and the Pacific, Africa, Europe
and North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Arab
States) in 1992 and 1993, and a number of subregional preparatory
meetings; expert group meetings on the six priority issues; and a
series of ad hoc round-tables on important Conference themes.
Important input also came from national population reports prepared
in more than 140 countries.
At its forty-eighth session in 1993, the UN General Assembly
(in resolution 48/186) strongly endorsed ICPD by deciding to make
the Preparatory Committee a subsidiary body of the Assembly, giving
ICPD a status comparable to that of the 1992 UN Conference on
Environment and Development (UNCED). Debate in the General
Assembly's Second Committee on the proposed annotated outline of
the Programme of Action further guided the Secretariat in preparing
the draft final document for negotiation at PrepCom III.
Delegations from over 170 countries took part in the
Preparatory Committee's third session, held at UN Headquarters in
New York. Negotiation of the 113-page draft Programme of Action was
the central activity. Delegates reached agreement on about 85 per
cent of the wording that is expected to be adopted in Cairo in
September; the remainder, including some substantial issues that
were not resolved, is subject to further negotiation at the
Conference.
An estimated 1,200 representatives from over 500
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) had unprecedented access to
the negotiation process and therefore an important influence in
shaping the outcome. The deliberations were widely covered by the
international news media.
The three-week session strengthened the consensus that
population concerns are an indispensable part of national and
international efforts to achieve equitable, sustainable
development. There was also broad agreement that family planning
should be provided as part of a broader effort to meet overall
reproductive health care needs, particularly of women.
This approach, Dr. Sadik later summarized, is "focused not on
demographic targets, but on seriously addressing the health and
education needs of individuals, especially of girls and women.
. . . Central to such endeavours is the imperative need to empower
women, to provide girls with a good education and women with better
health and real choices."
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF ACTION
The draft Programme of Action that emerged from PrepCom III builds
on the World Population Plan of Action adopted in Bucharest in 1974
and further developed 10 years later at the International
Conference on Population in Mexico City. But as the draft Preamble
points out, the document also reflects "the considerable
international consensus that has developed" since 1984 ""to
consider the broad issues of population, sustained economic growth
and sustainable development, and advances in the educational and
economic status of women . . . reflecting the growing awareness of
the linkages" among these issues.
In addition, the Preamble notes that ICPD will also build on
the achievements of the 1990 World Summit for Children, UNCED, and
the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, among others; and is
expected to contribute significantly to the World Summit for Social
Development, the Fourth World Conference on Women, and the
celebration of the United Nations' 50th anniversary, all in 1995,
as well as to the Second United Nations Conference on Human
Settlements in 1996.
"These events are expected to highlight further the call of
the 1994 Conference for greater investments in people and for a new
action agenda to make women full partners with men in the social,
economic and political lives of their communities," the Preamble
states.
The draft Programme stresses that efforts to slow down
population growth, to reduce poverty, to achieve economic progress,
to improve environmental protection, and to modify unsustainable
patterns of consumption and production are mutually reinforcing.
Its more than 40 subchapters spell out actions needed in regard to
a wide range of population and development themes, including
poverty alleviation, environmental protection, support for
families, population growth, ageing, sexuality, sexually
transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS, reproductive health needs
of adolescents, gender relations and male responsibility, maternal
and child health, urbanization, internal and international
migration, and education.
The Programme also defines: national, regional and
international efforts and resources required to implement some of
the actions outlined; related research, awareness creation and data
collection; partnership between Governments and non-governmental
organizations and the private sector; and mechanisms for following
up Conference decisions.
PLAN OF WORK IN CAIRO
The Conference will open on Monday, 5 September, at 10 a.m., at the
Cairo International Conference Centre. According to General
Assembly resolution 47/176, the head of each delegation should be
at the ministerial level or higher. A number of Heads of State or
Government have indicated they will attend and address the
Conference, including President Soeharto of Indonesia, Prime
Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, Prime Minister Gro Harlem
Brundtland of Norway, Prime Minister Tansu Ciller of Turkey, and
Prime Minister Kaamuta Laatasi of Tuvalu.
Nearly 1,000 non-governmental organizations have been
accredited to attend ICPD. In addition, while the Conference is
taking place, these and other NGOs will also participate in the NGO
Forum '94, to be held from 4 to 13 September at the National
Covered Stadium Complex, a 10-minute walk from the International
Conference Centre.
Registration of national delegations begins at 9 a.m. on 25
August and will continue through to the start of the Conference. It
is expected that many delegations will include parliamentarians and
representatives of non-governmental organizations and of various
national groups with important roles to play in implementing
population and development strategies.
In accordance with established practice at UN conferences,
preliminary consultations will be held on 3 and 4 September at the
Conference site to address procedural and organizational matters
which are to be taken up on the opening day. These include election
of officers, composition of the Conference General Committee,
adoption of the agenda and organization of work, and arrangements
for preparing the final report of the Conference.
From the representatives of participating States, the
Conference will elect a President, 27 Vice-Presidents from the
various regions (7 from Africa, 6 Asia, 5 Latin America and the
Caribbean, 6 Western Europe and others, and 3 Eastern Europe), an
ex officio Vice-President from the host country, a
Rapporteur-General, and the Chairman of the Conference's Main
Committee.
The Conference's general debate will take place in plenary
meetings from 5-9 September. It is expected to focus on experiences
in population and development strategies and programmes (item 8 of
the provisional agenda).
A separate Main Committee will meet in parallel with the
plenary from 5-9 September. This will finalize the ICPD Programme
of Action (item 9), by completing work on Chapters I (Preamble) and
II (Principles) and resolving those sections of Chapters III to XVI
of the draft text that are still in brackets for further
negotiation. The Committee will then submit the Programme of Action
to the plenary for approval and adoption.
The Rapporteur-General will prepare a draft report on the
Conference's background, proceedings and decisions, including an
account of the Main Committee's recommendations and the action
taken on them in plenary meetings. After the report and the
Programme of Action are adopted by the Conference, they will be
submitted to the General Assembly for consideration and approval at
its 49th session, which is to begin a few days after ICPD
concludes.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
ICPD Secretariat
220 E. 42nd St., 22nd floor
New York, NY 10017, U.S.A.
Tel: (212) 297-5244/5245
Fax: (212) 297-5250
Media Contacts: (212) 297-5023/5030 or 5279
August 1994
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