IN BRIEF

CST Internal Seminar

On 7-9 December 1998, the UNFPA Country Support Team for the South Pacific held an internal technical workshop. The focus of the workshop was on management of reproductive health programmes in small Pacific island countries in the post ICPD-period.

Discussions during the two and a half days centred on 3 main issues in managing RH programmes in these island countries, namely constraints and challenges; operationalization of reproductive health programmes and development of an enabling environment for RH programmes.

(Right) Mr. Azfar Khan talking about "Population, Poverty and Employment" during his public lecture

Visiting resource people included Ms. Marilyn Rice WHO/TSS Health Education and Promotion Specialist and Mr. Azfar Khan, TSS Specialist in Migration, Urbanization and Population Distribution based at ILO Geneva. On 8 December, Mr. Azfar gave a public lecture on "Population, poverty and employment" attended by 30 people.

Thematic Workshops

The Adviser on Reproductive Health & Gender was in the United Kingdom from 6-18 September 1998 to attend the Reproductive Health Programme Evaluation Course conducted by the Institute of Population Studies at the University of Exeter. The primary objectives of the course were to strengthen the knowledge and skills of the participants in evaluating RH programmes and to increase understanding of the role of evaluation in RH programme development.

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On 26-30 October 1998, the Adviser on Population Policies and Development Strategies participated in the Thematic Workshop: "Population, Poverty and the Environment" at the FAO Headquarters in Rome. Its objective was to assist TSS and CST staff to identify the programming implications of the complex array of linkages between population trends, the incidence of poverty and environmental degradation, and to deal with such implications in programme and project design as well as technical assistance.

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The Adviser on Reproductive Health (Programme) and the Adviser on Population Advocacy and IEC, attended a thematic workshop entitled Applications of IEC and Advocacy to Reproductive Health which was held in Geneva on 26-30 October for TSS specialists and Country Support Team Advisers.

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On 14-18 December, 1998, the Adviser on RH (Programme) participated in a ‘Design Workshop for a Distance Learning Module On Reproductive Health Including Family Planning And Sexual Health’. The workshop was organized by Mr. Arnfinn Jorgensen-Dahl, Principal Programme Development Officer at the UN Staff College, International Training Centre of the ILO at Turin, Italy.

IMPS Workshop

The UN Statistics Division organized a training workshop on the IMPS software in Suva for 23 Pacific Island country census and statistics department personnel from 14 countries from 29 June-17 July.

Mr. Yacob Zewoldi and Mr. Carlos Ellis of the UNSD served as resource persons for the workshop. Other resource persons included Mr. Michael Levin (US Bureau of the Census), Mr. Nuri Ozsever (Adviser on Population Data Processing and Data-base Management, UNFPA CST, Bangkok) and Mr. Laurie Lewis (Adviser on Population Statistics, UNFPA CST, Suva).