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) |
|
"ICPD 94"
November-December 1993
Number 10
Newsletter of the International Conference on Population and
Development, Cairo, Egypt, 5-13 September 1994
DR. SADIK REPORTS ON ICPD PREPARATORY PROCESS
Following are abridged excerpts from ICPD Secretary-General Dr.
Nafis Sadik's statement to the Second Committee of the United
Nations General Assembly, 4 November 1993:
The Annotated Outline document before you offers a first look
at the totality of the challenge before us. Now we need your
assessment to prepare the first draft of the final substantive
document of the Conference, a task we have been given by the ICPD
Preparatory Committee and ECOSOC.
We should not succumb to the temptation of trying to "reinvent
the wheel". Nor should we be seeking to open up and renegotiate
agreements and understandings reached at recent international
conferences.
We must keep firmly in our minds the centrality of population
issues as we prepare for Cairo. I would encourage you, as you
address each chapter and sub-chapter, to keep asking how each issue
and challenge ties into population and vice versa.
As you will see, we have gone well past the PrepCom II debate
on chapter titles. In doing so I hope we will have allayed some of
the concerns expressed about the intentions which may have existed
behind some of the chapter headings.
At PrepCom II, I set out my preliminary views on the
incorporation of a series of 20-year goals into the Cairo
Conference's outcome. These relate to reduction of mortality levels
for infants, children and mothers; universal access to family
planning information and services, with emphasis on meeting all
unmet demand; and universal access to and completion of
primary-level education by all school-age children and, for
countries that achieve primary education goals sooner, extension to
secondary-school levels. It is my intention to have specific
time-framed proposals ready for incorporation in the draft of the
final document.
While it is not necessary to cost out every area and activity
covered by the Conference, in some areas, such as those most
directly focused on family planning and population data, it will
not only be possible to spell out the expected costs, it will be
most important to do so.
Are our present institutional arrangements, with a certain
amount of fine tuning, equal to the new tasks that will inevitably
flow from the Cairo Conference? I am reminded of the adage, "If it
isn't broken, don't fix it." Or is some basic reordering necessary?
NATIONAL ACTIVITIES ASSISTED
As countries get ready to participate in the Cairo Conference,
we are already receiving encouraging reports of substantial
interaction within the governmental sector, with the involvement of
economic, social and planning agencies and in many cases of NGOs,
academics, parliamentarians and others.
With a range of extrabudgetary contributions, we have been
able to assist developing countries to undertake ICPD-related
national-level activities. While preparation of national population
reports has been the primary focus of such funding, in many
instances it is also being used for wider awareness-creation
activities. To date 92 countries have been assisted in this way, at
a total outlay of over $760,000.
As of today, 50 national population reports have been received
by the ICPD Secretariat and at least an equal number are on their
way. Work is under way to analyse these reports so that an overview
of national experiences can be available for PrepCom III and the
Conference itself. We encourage you to make your full national
reports as widely available as possible in your countries, at
PrepCom III and at the Conference in Cairo.
This Committee has before it, within the report of the
Economic and Social Council, resolution 1993/76 (extending the
third session of the Preparatory Committee by one week, and
convening two days of pre- Conference consultations in Cairo). We
hope it will be fully endorsed by the General Assembly.
We intend to circulate a final unedited version of the draft
final Conference document in early January. Thereafter the
Conference Secretariat will be available for discussions with
delegates and other interested groups.
I would also see benefit in holding several informal one-day
briefing meetings during this three-month period. These should in
no way be seen as negotiating occasions. Rather, they would be
opportunities for the Secretariat to provide background on sections
of the text and for delegates to exchange preliminary views, for
example, on the proposed goals and other aspects of the
Conference's mandate.
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