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) |
|
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This newsletter is being made available by the Population Information
Network (POPIN) Gopher of the United Nations Population Division,
Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis, in
collaboration with Population Communication International. For further
information, please contact Patrice_Newman@together.org
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INTERNATIONAL DATELINE
A Population and Development News
and Information Service
SEPTEMBER 1995
SEPTEMBER WORLD POPULATION UPDATE:
5,716,300,000 (Population Reference Bureau)
LINKING THE CAIRO POPULATION CONFERENCE WITH THIS MONTH'S FOURTH
WORLD CONFERENCE ON WOMEN IN BEIJING, the 1995 State of World
Population report from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
focuses on gender equity and reproductive health--issues central to
both international efforts. The report also presents a substantive
summary on the importance of the 1994 International Conference on
Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo, calling the
conference "the start of a new era in population and development."
Sub-titled, "Decisions for Development: Women, Empowerment and
Reproductive Health," the 76-page report emphasizes that to be most
effective, family planning services should be integrated into a wider
context of reproductive health, rather than approached in isolation.
The ICPD Program of Action, UNFPA notes, "explicitly places human
beings, rather than human numbers, at the center of all population
and development activities". And the ICPD plan encourages the
international community, says UNFPA, "to address global problems
by meeting individual needs...". The UNFPA report insists that
social and economic development will result from progress on at least
three of the Cairo conference's main goals: expanded access to
education--particularly for girls; reduced mortality rates, and
increased access to quality reproductive health services, including
family planning. And, UNFPA says, achieving these goals will bring
the concomitant benefit of balanced, sustainable population growth.
AS PART OF ITS WIDE-RANGING STUDY, UNFPA REPORTS these updated
statistics and situations: Only 59 percent of pregnant Third World
women receive prenatal medical care. The percentage varies widely,
from 35 percent coverage in Southern Asia to nearly 90 percent in
Southern Africa, Eastern Asia and the Caribbean. Only 55 percent of
deliveries in the developing world take place in the presence of a
trained attendant. Cancers of the cervix--linked to sexually
transmitted diseases and second only to breast cancer in the
incidence of female cancers--take the lives of 300,000 women per
year. Maternal deaths from unsafe abortions claim an estimated
67,000 lives annually--a situation that "urgently" demands reducing
the number of such abortions while increasing access to counselling
and proper care for survivors, UNFPA says. And in the past three
decades, Third World contraceptive use has increased to 57 percent
from 14 percent in Asia, Africa and Latin America, while birth rates
have fallen by 45 percent and average family size by nearly half.
AT THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL LEVELS, THE UNFPA SURVEY CALLS FOR GENDER
EQUALITY AND THE EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN. Noting that in many
societies, only women's reproductive role is recognized, the report
strongly recommends outlawing and opposing all forms of
discrimination against women. Despite progress, the survey found
that women continue to be grossly under-represented in politics. In
the Third World, discrimination persists even though women grow up
to 80 percent of all food produced. Worldwide, they constitute
one-third of the wage-labor force and in most countries, work longer
hours than men--but their contributions are excluded from economic
statistics, the UNFPA report points out. UNFPA says that the key
contributors to women's empowerment lie in education and health,
including reproductive health and family planning. And, the report
concludes: "Traditional laws and practices which enforce women's
subordination must be challenged." For copies of the report,
contact: United Nations Population Fund, 220 East 42nd St., New
York, NY 10017, USA.
(The State of World Population 1995,
July 1995, UNFPA, New York)
* * * * *
IN BRIEF .....
..... EGYPT retracted its recent ban on female genital
mutilation--also known as female circumcision. Calling for the
practice to become a medical procedure, Minister of Health Ali Abdel
Fatah designated a number of hospitals to perform the operation for
a fee. Last September, Fatah publicly declared at the International
Conference on Population and Development that genital mutilation
should be banned and its practitioners punished. The Grand Mufti of
Egypt and other religious leaders issued a decree saying that the
medical establishment's view of female circumcision should prevail.
Government officials say that the new hospital policy is an attempt
to end "the butchery that damages the health and lives of more than
half of all young girls." But a women's group, The New Woman
Research Center in Egypt, said that the decision to codify female
genital mutilation instead of criminalizing it has nothing to do with
religion or morality but is rather, "a decision to codify the control
of women, and codify violence against them, in addition to codifying
their inferior status in society."
(The Women's Watch, June 1995,
International Women's Rights Action Watch)
..... HUMAN SALIVA contains a protein that scientists say prevents
the AIDS virus from infecting human cells in the lab. A team of
scientists noted that no cases of HIV transmission have been recorded
through strictly salivary contact, and subsequently found that a
protein called secretory leukocyte protease inhibitor, or SLPI,
prevented HIV from attaching to cell membranes. The cells remained
protected for up to four weeks even when free of saliva and exposed
to more HIV. The scientists said that since SLPI is found in human
blood at low levels, humans may be able to tolerate high levels of
the protein without side-effects.
(New York Newsday, 31 January 1995)
..... INCREASED SPENDING ON EDUCATION was newly pledged by the
leaders of the nine developing countries whose citizens make up half
the world's total population and include 70 percent of all
illiterates. The commitment was a spinoff of the March Social
Summit, held in Copenhagen, and involved leaders from China, India,
Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan.
Leaders from those same countries met earlier at "Education for All"
conferences in Thailand and India. Indian Prime Minister P.V.
Narasimha Rao congratulated all nine countries for making basic
education a budget priority since the 1993 New Delhi meeting, adding:
"Basic education increases economic productivity, enhances social and
cultural awareness, promotes health and child survival and slows down
population growth."
(UNESCO News, 20 March 1995, U.N. Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization, Paris)
..... HONG KONG and Chinese officials need to work more closely on
development in the shared Pearl River delta or massive environmental
damage could threaten the region's future. Planning experts called
for better cross-border cooperation. If development around the
almost-dead Pearl River could be "linked with non-polluting mass
transit systems" and manufacturing could be moved away from the
river, the region could retain its future economic viability and the
river's pollution could be diluted, said University of British
Columbia professor Aprodicio Laquian. Economically, this area of
Hong Kong and China is Asia's fastest growing region.
(South China Morning Post, 6 May 1995, Hong Kong)
..... CHINA recently announced an environmental initiative to
replace deserts with forests. Xu Youfang, China's forestry minister,
said the plan would boost China's current forest coverage of 14
percent to 17 percent by 2010 and 20 percent by 2050. Resources to
achieve the plan, he said, will come from local capital, World Bank
and other international loans, and volunteer labor. Tree-felling in
China began more than 1,000 years ago, when the population already
numbered in the hundreds of millions. The practice turned north
China's lush forests into wastelands and unleashed the soil erosion
and devastating silting of rivers that gave the flood-prone Yellow
River its name. Reforestation will pay huge dividends, the forestry
minister said, ranging from cleaner air, more carbon dioxide
absorption, less acid rain, lower soil erosion and safer habitats for
more abundant wildlife to the growing profits that will come with
recovery and exploitation of arid wastelands.
(Financial Times, 11 May 1995, Beijing)
* * * * *
THE ARGUMENT FOR HARNESSING INDIA'S MOUNTAIN OF CATTLE DUNG TO CREATE
COOKING GAS SEEMED UNASSAILABLE. Its advocates said the so-called
"biogas technology" is easy and cheap to install and maintain,
environmentally-friendly and a labor-saving help to rural women
forced to spend countless back-breaking hours foraging for fuelwood.
Furthermore, biogas has the enthusiastic backing and financial
support of the Indian government, the Canadian International
Development Agency and other development-oriented organizations. The
technology's simple system is one attraction. Water and dung from
cattle--India has 600 million of them--are mixed in a sealed
underground pit. Combustible biogas emanating from the mixture then
seeps through a pipe leading to small stoves and lights. The
residue, captured in the pit, can be used as fertilizer.
IN ITS ENTHUSIASM, THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT LAUNCHED A MASSIVE CAMPAIGN
to build 15 million biogas units. But the program ran into financial
constraints, bureaucratic roadblocks and cultural opposition. There
is fear that the generous governmental subsidies will dry up next
year, putting the technology beyond the budget of a family. And the
government bureaucracy diverted funding earmarked for the biogas
program to other projects or simply entangled it in red tape. But
most important, it was realized that the 50 kilograms of dung and 50
liters of water required for each biogas plant daily were
inaccessible to the average family. And the mechanism feeds only one
gas range at a time, while rural women prefer to cook on two fires.
Many male villagers consider the biogas investment unnecessary, since
they have their women to collect firewood free of charge. And many
women are against the technology because, one explained: "They don't
like to cook food with the waste of animals." An executive of Action
for Food Production, which manages much of the biogas program,
acknowledged that to succeed, "ultimately, the people have to
accept the technology."
Globe and Mail, 27 February 1995, Toronto, Canada)
* * * * *
SUNSHINE AND POVERTY ARE THE UNLIKELY BUT ESSENTIAL TWIN ELEMENTS
necessary to harness natural and human resources for a sewerage
system that is efficient, ecology-friendly, cheap to build and
maintain, and nutritionally productive. The immediate beneficiaries
are some 20,000 of Calcutta's poorest people, who have found a way
of living, working and and reaping a harvest from what was once a
wasteland. Dr. Dhrubajyoti Ghosh, executive engineer for the
Calcutta Metropolitan Water and Sanitation Authority, points out that
the system--developed over the century in the East Calcutta
Marshes--is a vast recycling network that transforms a third of the
teeming East Indian city's sewage and almost all of its industrial
waste into food for 20 tons of fish and 150 tons of vegetables every
day.
AN ARMY OF MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN SCAVENGE CALCUTTA'S MOUNTAINOUS
REFUSE DUMP, sifting out anything salvageable or salable. The
residual mass of rotting organic matter then washes into the
marshes--a 20,000-acre checkerboard of tree-fringed canals, vegetable
plots, rice paddies and fish ponds. The organic matter is ideal for
growing vegetables, which are irrigated with sewage water purified
naturally by water hyacinth and other aquatic plants that leach out
even heavy metals, grease and oil. Algae that grows explosively
under the subcontinent's tropical sun feeds on the raw sewage, whose
nutritional values are transformed into edible protein that fattens
a dozen commercial species of fish. The effluent from the fish ponds
is also used, mostly in the rice paddies dotted around the outer
reaches of the marshes.
THE SYSTEM HAS BEEN STUDIED AND PROMOTED BY GHOSH since he first
visited the East Calcutta marshes in 1980. He is convinced that the
self-help sanitation system is replicable elsewhere in India and the
Third World tropics. That it is acceptable to the marsh dwellers was
proved in 1943 when, two years after the British built a modern
sewage works in the heart of the marshes, it was abandoned. The
marsh farmers and fishermen, whom Ghosh calls "natural ecologists",
prevailed with their existing traditional sewerage network. But
there are formidable forces with envious eyes on the marshes. As
early as the 1960s, a large portion of the East Calcutta Marshes was
taken over for a housing development. In the 1980s, a new road
opened the area to developers who drained many fish ponds to build
homes for Calcutta's wealthy. Nevertheless, Ghosh's department has
assisted in installing similar low-cost, self-help sanitation
projects outside Calcutta. To the resistance of cost-cutting
bureaucrats, Ghosh replies: "This isn't a money-spending exercise.
It's money-saving, and we could do something similar almost anywhere
else in the tropics."
(People & the Planet, Vol. 4, No 1, 1995,
International Planned Parenthood Federation, London)
* * * * *
IN SOME RESPECTS, IT'S BEEN ALL DOWNHILL FOR UKRAINIAN WOMEN since
their country broke away from the Soviet Union. According to a new
report by Ukrainian researchers in conjunction with the United
Nations, Ukrainian women--whose education level is among the world's
highest and who make up 54 percent of the nation's population--have
lost ground in both their nation's workforce and in Parliament. The
1995 Ukrainian Human Development Report--the first such study
produced in a former USSR country--asserts that under the Soviet
system, a large majority of working-age women were employed, their
levels of education were high, and they had access to prolonged
maternity leave and child care facilities. From 1970 onward,
Ukrainian women had greater presence in the country's labor force
than men--about a 52-to-48 percent ratio. But the report provides
evidence that today, women are increasingly marginalized in Ukraine.
Women's wages average 82 percent of men's. Women are in a
significant minority among supervisory and managerial personnel. A
substantial number of firms report they expect women's share of
employment to decline. In the Parliament, women held one-third of
the seats--36 percent under the last Soviet Ukrainian assembly. But
in post--independence 1994, the parliamentary election pared their
share to less than 4 percent.
(Update, 24 April 1995, U.N.
Development Program, New York)
* * * * *
THE ROLE THAT THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN PLAYS IN DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS IS
ILLUSTRATED by trends in both age at marriage and family size in
Yemen. Yemeni women marry about six months later now than they did
15 years ago. But the delay becomes greater in direct proportion to
the amount of education a woman has. For those in the 25-to
49-year-old age bracket who have more than a primary school
education, the median marriage age is 23 years. For women without
any education, the average age at marriage is less than 16 years.
Education also has a direct bearing on a woman's fertility rate--the
number of children she is likely to have during her childbearing
years. At the current rate, a Yemeni woman will average 7.7
children--one of the world's highest fertility rates. In the
countryside, where the level of education is lower, the rate rises
to 8.2. On average, women without schooling have 2.4 children more
than women with a primary school education and 4.6 children more than
women educated beyond the primary level. Recent statistics also
project that if all unwanted births were prevented, the national
average fertility rate would drop to six children.
(Populi, April 1995, United Nations Population Fund
(UNFPA), New York)
* * * * *
ALTHOUGH DEATH IN CHILDBIRTH IS 'ALMOST ALWAYS PREVENTABLE,' at least
half a million women die annually during pregnancy or in giving
birth--99 percent of them in the Third World. That is one of the
grim observations contained in Director-General Hiroshi Nakajima's
report to the World Health Organization executive board. Titled,
Maternal and Child Health and Family Planning: Quality of Care--A
Conceptual and Strategic Framework for Reproductive Health, the
report says that every year, 20 million women seek to end unwanted
pregnancies by risking unsafe abortion. Of this number, at least
70,000 die, and countless more are disabled. The toll results from
lack of access to appropriate, acceptable and affordable family
planning information and services, or ways of preventing and managing
abortion complications. Many maternal deaths occur among
adolescents, with unsafe abortions often a leading cause. Linked to
maternal health is that of the newborn, 2.8 million of whom die
within the first week owing to inappropriate or inadequate care
during pregnancy, delivery and the first critical hours of life.
THE OBJECTIVE OF W.H.O.'S STRATEGY IS TO ADDRESS REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
NEEDS, with special attention to the under-served, including the
young, of whom the WHO report emphasizes: "Adolescence and the
reproductive years that follow are critical periods of life." The
approach focuses on disseminating information, promoting healthy and
responsible behavior, and providing sound care and treatment. Over
all, WHO'S purpose is to foster an environment where people are
empowered to make free choices in their reproductive lives. It
advises its member states to include, at the very least, family
planning information and services, with special attention to
promoting safe motherhood and preventing and managing unsafe abortion
and sexually transmitted diseases. None of these recommendations,
WHO stresses, requires expensive or sophisticated technology or
drugs. Instead, WHO says, such basic services can be delivered
through primary health care. Dr. Tomis Turmen, director of WHO's
Division of Family Health, says that: "Investment in these areas
yields immense returns in promoting healthy behavior and lifestyles
and protecting the health of women and men, as well as future
generations."
(Features, January 1995,
World Health Organization, Geneva)
* * * * *
AN EXPLODING POPULATION IS PLAGUING BOGOTA with all of the ills that
accompany over-rapid urbanization in the Third World. With the
rural-to-urban influx almost out of control, the population of the
once-staid old colonial capital of Colombia has grown during the last
decade at an annual rate of over 4.5 percent a year, packing the city
with a population of more than 6.3 million. About 16 percent of the
nation's inhabitants and a third of its industries are crammed into
the mile-high metropolis. And predictably, the city has outgrown its
public services, notably transport, sewerage and water facilities.
Simultaneously, corruption and crime are rampant, with recorded
murders totaling 14 a day. Prostitutes, drug dealers and
knife-carrying robbers roam the streets within the shadows of the
presidential palace. The population growth has also had a
destructive impact on the land. The uncontrolled sprawl is eating
away at what was once rich surrounding farm acreage.
WHILE THE MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT LACKS A COORDINATED ATTACK ON BOGOTA'S
PROBLEMS, there is general agreement that something needs to be done.
A planning team called Bogota 2000 has made a token start by
preparing a list of priority items that need tackling. Intended to
highlight the most serious problems and awaken civic spirit, the
list includes these priorities: constructing a metro rapid-transit
system; decontaminating the polluted Bogota River, and establishing
a free-trade zone. At the same time, a British company has analyzed
proposals for breaking the transport bottleneck created by zones of
congestion and access problems. At present, 600,000-plus vehicles
and buses run by 50 competing companies clog the streets and
highways. Yet Bogota has no long-term transport or planning
strategy. Road widening and flyover construction have been attacked
haphazardly. And while there is considerable sentiment for a metro,
the project would be costly--certainly beyond the municipality's
financial resources--and could only be undertaken with substantial
federal contributions.
(Financial Times, 8-9 October 1994, Bogota)
* * * * *
A NEW AND UNORTHODOX INTERNATIONAL PROJECT HAS BEEN LAUNCHED by six
family planning associations (FPAs) in Africa, Asia and the
Caribbean. Under the umbrella of the International Planned
Parenthood Federation's (IPPF) Sexual Health Project, the undertaking
is designed to improve sexual health at the community level with
strong grass-roots input that teaches the FPA staff and volunteers
to better understand the needs and concerns of the people they serve.
Carried out by community discussions, the approach adds a new
dimension to traditional programs, which tend to ignore community
views. The programs in which the teachers learn from their pupils
is being tested in Burkina Faso, Dominican Republic, Gambia, Ghana,
India and Tanzania. As IPPF explains: "The Sexual Health Program
is creating the opportunity for people in marginalized villages and
neighborhoods to take independent, community action to change their
lives for the better."
SEXUAL HEALTH BEGINS WITH THE INDIVIDUAL, BUT ALSO BENEFITS
COMMUNITIES, says Hilary Hughes, IPPF's adviser on the new project.
In an article elaborating on the subject, he explains that the term
"sexual health" goes beyond such physical considerations as
pregnancy, childbirth and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). It
also includes the emotional relationships "which allow us to develop
as full human beings", Hughes says. Hughes calls sexual health "a
basic human right" which guarantees an individual the ability to
exercise control over his or her sex life. He suggests that
"preaching" rarely has the impact of the participatory approach to
sexual health because options for people to improve their lives may
entail factors beyond their control, such as poverty or lack of
power. He concludes that to move forward, individuals and
communities must be encouraged to express their needs--the approach
taken by the IPPF's new participatory program. For further
information and copies of the paper Participatory Operations Research
and Sexual Health, write to Sexual Health Project, International
Planned Parenthood Federation, Regent's College, Inner Circle,
Regent's Park, London NW1 4NS, England.
(Press Release, January 1995, IPPF, London and Health Action,
September/November 1994, AHRTAG, London)
* * * * *
WHILE THAILAND'S BIRTH RATE HAS DROPPED DRAMATICALLY, the incidence
of HIV and AIDS there is rising at an alarming rate. Ironically,
both developments stem from the national attitude toward family
planning and contraception--notably toward condoms. The annual
growth rate of Thailand's population has been slashed to 1.4
percent--half of what it was in the 1970s. But at the same time,
with well over 600,000 Thais already affected, the AIDS epidemic is
spreading at a runaway pace. The explanation is that many Thai
agencies and providers believe that AIDS and family planning are two
different issues which should be tackled separately. Therefore, a
woman seeking advice about contraceptives gets little or no
information about measures--including condoms--for avoiding HIV and
AIDS. Those preventive measures are not discussed unless a woman
asks for information on the subject. If mentioned at all as a
preventive measure, condoms are tagged onto a family planning lesson
as a last-choice contraceptive option. Because Thais tend to
associate condoms with prostitution, they are rarely prescribed for
married couples. In any case, according to Planned Parenthood
Association providers, "almost all women would say that their
husbands refuse condoms during sex." However, Jon Ungphakorn,
director of the AIDS-counseling organization ACCESS, promotes the use
of condoms as both a family planning measure and as an AIDS
preventive.
(WorldAIDS, Panos Institute, London, Washington, Paris)
* * * * *
POPULATION-DRIVEN ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND POVERTY ARE ARCS OF
THE SAME VICIOUS CIRCLE, says the United Nations Environment Program
(UNEP). That conclusion is the focal point of a paper designed to
encourage governments to examine their national linkages of
population, environment, poverty and sustainable development. In
releasing the paper, UNEP's Executive Director Elisabeth Dowdeswell
said: "Not until the poor are given the means and opportunity to
break out of the vicious circle in which poverty holds them will real
sustainable development become a possibility". According to the UNEP
paper, titled Poverty and the Environment: Reconciling Short-Term
News and Long-Term Sustainable Goals, one-fifth of the world's 5.6
billion people live in absolute poverty. In least-developed
countries, the percentage is higher. Worldwide, the magnitude of the
ecological challenge is staggering: Every second over 200 tons of
carbon dioxide pour into the atmosphere and 750 tons of topsoil are
lost. Each day 47,000 hectares of forest are destroyed, 345,000
hectares of land are turned to desert and probably as many as 300
species become extinct. Dowdeswell's paper concludes with the
warning that the world's leaders can succeed in coping with these
challenges if they listen to the poor, the least advantaged and the
most vulnerable members of the global society. Poverty and the
Environment is available through: UNEP Information and Public
Affairs, P.O. Box 30552, Nairobi, Kenya.
(UN Weekly, 7 March 1995, United Nations,
Vienna, Austria)
* * * * *