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", No. 16
June 1994
Newsletter of the International Conference on Population and
Development
Cairo, Egypt, 5-13 September 1994
CAIRO WORK SCHEDULE, PROCEDURES OUTLINED IN LETTER TO GOVERNMENTS
Formal invitations to the International Conference on Population
and Development were extended to all Governments by the Secretary-
General of the United Nations in a note verbale on 13 May, a clear
sign that ICPD will soon be under way. Countries have since been
sent details of Conference arrangements, as part of ongoing efforts
by the Secretary-General of the Conference to inform those who will
transform the extensive ICPD preparations into a Programme of
Action in population and development for the next 20 years.
With the last session of the ICPD Preparatory Committee
(PrepCom III) over, in addition to matters like the booking of
flights to Cairo and hotel rooms, attention has turned to final
preparations for the Conference. To facilitate this process, an
informal consultation on ICPD was held in New York on 3 June.
A 25 May letter to all participating countries from the
Secretary-General of the Conference, Dr. Nafis Sadik, notes that in
addition to negotiation of the draft Programme of Action which is
to be further negotiated and finalized in Cairo, PrepCom III in
April approved the draft provisional rules of procedure for the
Conference, which have been forwarded to the UN General Assembly
for adoption. Dr. Sadik's letter describes these rules, and offers
some comments and suggestions, summarized below:
HIGH-LEVEL REPRESENTATION
The Conference will open on Monday, 5 September, at 10 am, 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. "The response to this request has
been uniformly positive," Dr. Sadik reports. Several Heads of State
or Government have indicated they will participate.
Each participating Government's Head of State or Foreign
Minister is asked to provide the UN Secretariat with the names of
its delegates well in advance of the Conference, and if possible to
submit their credentials at least a week beforehand. Registration
of delegates has been set to begin at 9 am on 25 August. The
registration site in Cairo has not yet been specified, but it will
be near the Conference site and easily accessible to all
delegations.
In her letter, Dr. Sadik reiterates her hope that national
delegations will be gender balanced, and will include
parliamentarians and representatives of non-governmental
organizations and of various sectors and 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 report of the Conference.
From the representatives of participating States, the
Conference will elect a President, 27 Vice-Presidents (from Africa,
7; Asia, 6; Latin America and the Caribbean, 5; Western Europe and
others, 6; and Eastern Europe, 3), 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. Participants are 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 to complete negotiations on the
Programme of Action of the Conference (item 9), resolving those
sections of the draft text that are currently awaiting final
resolution in Cairo. The Committee will then submit its report on
the Programme of Action to the plenary.
The Rapporteur-General, assisted by two designated
representatives from each region, 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 UN General Assembly at its 49th session, which
will start its proceedings one week after ICPD concludes.
INFORMAL CONSULTATION HELD
At the request of PrepCom III, Dr. Sadik convened a half-day
informal consultation on ICPD in New York on 3 June. This focused
on the issues that are still outstanding. The meeting also provided
an opportunity to brief delegations on developments since the
PrepCom. In addition, Dr. Sadik outlined proposed arrangements for
any intersessional discussions in which delegations might wish to
exchange views on those portions of the draft Programme of Action
that still remain to be agreed on. It is understood by all parties
that such discussions would not be negotiations, but rather part of
an effort to facilitate and accelerate negotiations in Cairo.
Emphasizing the importance of PrepCom III, Dr. Sadik noted
that it transformed both the content and status of the draft
Programme of Action. She said the draft is now much stronger than
the text submitted by the ICPD Secretariat in many areas, including
the empowerment of women, education, the family, partnership with
non-governmental organizations, and follow-up to the Conference.
She observed wryly that despite repeated calls by delegates for a
more concise draft, the document approved by the PrepCom is 45 per
cent longer than the earlier version.
Referring to the status of the document, she stated: "It is
now a text negotiated by and therefore the property of delegations
and the countries they represent. Everything in the revised draft,
including the bracketed texts, is at the instruction of national
delegations at PrepCom III."
Dr. Sadik reported that the document is now being distributed
widely in the final, unedited, English-language version. Several
thousand copies have already been produced, and demand is
increasing. She advised that the official version is expected to be
available in the six UN languages by the end of June, nine weeks
before the Conference. Every effort will be taken, Dr. Sadik said,
to ensure that the document reaches all concerned well before they
depart for Cairo. This was warmly welcomed by participants.
President Soeharto of Indonesia and Prime Minister Gro Harlem
Brundtland of Norway have confirmed that they will attend ICPD, Dr.
Sadik announced. She added that she expects 10 or more heads of
State to participate in the Conference.
Turning to the draft Programme of Action, Dr. Sadik recalled
that most of the attention at PrepCom III was focused on detailed
negotiations of Chapters 3-16 of the document, with little time for
consideration of Chapters 1 (Preamble) and 2 (Principles). She
noted that there was agreement that revised versions of these two
chapters presented by Preparatory Committee Chairman Dr. Fred Sai
would be included in the draft Programme of Action for further
negotiation and approval in Cairo.
Dr. Sadik welcomed the willingness of Canada to coordinate
informal discussions among international participants prior to the
Conference, in an effort to build consensus on the substance of
these two chapters.
Similarly, Dr. Sadik welcomed the willingness of India and
Indonesia to act as joint coordinators of informal discussions
concerning the quantitative goals proposed in the draft Programme
of Action. These goals are in three areas: infant, child and
maternal mortality; education, especially for girls; and universal
access to family planning information and services, within the
context of reproductive health services.
Dr. Sadik emphasized that the goals adopted in Cairo will have
to be realistic, but also ambitious enough to reflect a meaningful
commitment by both developed and developing countries to progress
in these important areas.
A third area where more work will be required concerns the
language and figures -- the breakdown, levels and sources -- of the
financial resources proposed in the draft Programme of Action.
These deal with basic reproductive health services including family
planning; programmes for the prevention of sexually transmitted
diseases including HIV/AIDS; and population data, policy and
research needs. The Netherlands will facilitate ongoing informal
discussions in this regard. Dr. Sadik expressed optimism that these
discussions will result in early resolution of outstanding
questions on resource estimates.
Half a dozen speakers, some on behalf of groups of countries,
then commented briefly on the areas of unfinished discussion.
Greece, speaking for the European Union, expressed optimism
that agreement on Chapters 1 and 2 and on the proposed goals could
be reached without great difficulty. However, the representative
said, both the methodology used to estimate resource needs and the
actual figures would be core issues for Cairo. He also suggested
that the alternative wording proposed by the European Union for
paragraph 8.25 (contained in the draft Programme as paragraph 8.25
bis) provides a good basis for compromise in regard to unsafe
abortion, and this could in turn facilitate the resolution of other
definitional disputes.
Algeria, speaking for the Group of 77 and China, called for a
more precise Preamble, and fewer principles in Chapter 2. The
representative said he hoped that in Cairo all donor countries
would follow the lead of those donors that have already indicated
a readiness to commit additional resources. Discussion of goals, he
stated, must take account of each country's stage of development,
as well as the availability of resources.
Canada proposed holding an ad hoc informal meeting on Chapters
1 and 2 during the period of 11-15 July, the third week of the UN
Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). The representative noted that
the 49th World Health Assembly had just approved a number of
resolutions related to the goals proposed in the draft Programme.
Based on what was accomplished at PrepCom III, she voiced optimism
that the 5 per cent of the draft Programme of Action not yet agreed
on would be resolved in Cairo.
Ambassador Nicolaas Biegman of the Netherlands pledged to work
to facilitate an informal understanding on resource issues prior to
the Conference. He suggested that one or more open-ended informal
meetings on resources, also to be held at the time of the ECOSOC
session in New York (27 June-29 July), could prove highly useful.
Other statements were made by Ghana, the United States,
Senegal and Morocco.
In conclusion, Dr. Sadik summarized some of the organizational
issues described in her letter to UN Missions, and noted that she
expects Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Secretary-General
Boutros-Ghali to address the opening plenary on 5 September.
She reiterated that while there will be informal discussion on
aspects of the draft Programme of Action, no actual negotiation
will take place prior to the Conference. She added that any
informal meetings that might be called by any of the coordinators
(Canada, India, Indonesia and the Netherlands) would be duly
announced in advance the UN Journal.
***
For printed or electronic copies of the "ICPD 94" newsletter, in
English, French or Spanish, or further information, please
contact:
ICPD Secretariat 220 E. 42nd Street, 22nd floor
New York, N.Y. 10017, USA
Tel: (212) 297-5244/5245
Media contact: (212) 297-5023/5030 or 5279
Fax: (212) 297-5250
E-mail: ryanw@unfpa.org or icpd@igc.apc.org
* *** *