COUNTRY PROGRAMME NEWS

As a result of the hard work of numerous national officials and NGOs, Papua New Guinea (PNG) is stepping up population and development activities. A comprehensive population programme is being supported by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). New project activities are coming on stream in the core areas of reproductive health (including family planning and sexual health), population and development strategies, and population advocacy, information, education and communication.

UNFPA Programme activities in Papua New Guinea

Under Project PNG/94/P01 ("Integration of Population Factors into Development Planning"), a high level of activity has been achieved. The National Population Council meets regularly and a Technical Advisory Committee has been established. The National Population Policy is being revised. The National Planning Office has been re-established under a Ministry of Planning, and the Population Planning Unit has been strengthened with more national staff. The work under the UNFPA-sponsored project has been very timely with a series of workshops conducted at provincial level to help staff to use data more effectively in their planning exercises. These workshops and the development of provincial implementation plans of the National Population Policy are complementary to the implementation of the Organic Law on Provincial Governments and Local-Level Governments which was introduced on 19 July 1995. ILO executes this project on behalf of UNFPA, and a Chief Technical Adviser assists the Population Planning Unit to implement activities. The CST Suva advisers in the area of Population and Development Strategies have provided technical inputs to the workshop programme.

UNFPA has supported maternal and child health and family planning programmes in PNG since 1973. The need for reproductive health and family planning programmes in PNG is evident from the patterns of persisting high fertility, limited contraceptive prevalence, high maternal mortality, increasing morbidity from sexually transmitted diseases, and difficult socio-economic conditions. In 1995, a new initiative (PNG/95/P01) was approved by UNFPA, executed by WHO and implemented by the National Department of Health, to strengthen reproductive health and family planning in four provinces, namely Central, Madang, Manus and East Sepik. This project forms part of a coordinated national reproductive health programme, which includes the PNG Population and Family Planning Project funded by a consortium of AusAID, World Bank, the Asian Development and the Government.

An important initial activity by national project staff and the Chief Technical Adviser was the conducting of a detailed baseline survey of the four provinces to collect essential data for planning and monitoring. The fieldwork for the baseline survey of about 4,000 women aged 15-49 was completed in October 1996. It is expected that data analysis of the baseline survey will be completed in the next few months. With cooperation from the Department of Community Medicine, University of Papua New Guinea, the baseline survey team also conducted focus group interviews of about 100 men in villages in the project provinces. The aim was to find out what men thought would be their role and responsibility in reproductive health/family planning. The third component of the data collection initiative under the project is a situation analysis of the health infrastructure in the four project provinces, and the role of NGOs, including the churches, in health promotion and service delivery. The results from these surveys will hopefully provide the data to formulate realistic operational objectives for reproductive health activities and quantifiable indicators for measuring achievements.

Advocacy permeates all projects to raise awareness about population issues and promote support for population policies. However, a variety of projects have been designed to address targeted groups and audiences through information, education and communication (in short, IEC) approaches. The Population Education Project (PNG/96/P02) will incorporate population issues into the school curriculum from Years 1 to 12. The Family Life Education Project, through the Department of Home Affairs, focuses on gender concerns in population and development. When finally launched these two projects will be reinforced and supplemented by the "Tok Stret" (i.e. Talk Straight) Pilot Radio Communication Project. With the collaboration of the YWCA and the National Broadcasting Commission, the project aims to air two separate one-hour radio shows, once a week for fifty weeks, on Gender and Adolescent Sexuality issues.

Future Search Conference : Building Partnerships

Another project, "Gender Sensitization through Role Models", to be undertaken by the National Council of Women in cooperation with the Department of Education, will help to raise awareness among male and female students and teachers about the issues facing women in their quest to succeed, to motivate girls to continue with their schooling, and to help clarify gender issues. Through these diverse project activities, therefore, the PNG programme supported by the UNFPA is combining advocacy on population issues with sustained information, education and communication components.

Recognizing the important role that non-governmental organizations can have in population activities, in partnership with Government, UNFPA sponsored a unique conference to help in consolidating existing relationships between NGOs and Government stakeholder groups. Nearly 60 participants (from NGOs, Government, community-based organizations, women's groups, the private sector, donor agencies, research institutions, churches, politicians and the media) attended a Future Search Conference on "Population and Development: Building Partnerships for the Future", in Lae on 2-5 September 1996 to follow-up on the International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action. Facilitated by resource persons from the Foundation for International Training (FIT) of Canada and a National Working Group, the Future Search Conference helped each "stakeholder group" to articulate its role as a development partner in population-and-development. As Ms Margaret O'Callaghan, the UNFPA Representative, noted, the innovative conference process "broke down barriers which previously existed, particularly between Government and NGOs".

A strong sense of national ownership is being engendered in the UNFPA population programme in PNG.