The Pacific Response

To The Hague

About fifty delegates from 13 Pacific Island Countries (PICs) are expected to attend the International Forum and its parallel meetings in the Hague on 4-12 February 1999, organised by the UNFPA in collaboration with the Government of the Netherlands. These meetings relate to the five-year review of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and its Programme of Action (PoA). This five-year review process is known as "ICPD+5".

The Forum will contribute to the review by focusing on five substantive themes and by analysing country-level operational and programme experience in the implementation of the PoA. The five themes are: creating an enabling environment for the further implementation of the ICPD PoA; reproductive health, including family planning and sexual health, and reproductive rights; gender equality, equity and the empowerment of women; strengthening partnerships; and resource flows and financing for the implementation of the ICPD PoA.

An International Forum of Parliamentarians on ICPD+5 will be hosted by the Dutch Parliament on 4-6 February. In the following days, on 6-7 February, an NGO Forum and a Youth Forum on ICPD+5 will be convened

Pacific island delegations will be led by Ministers, with one Prime Minister leading his country delegation. As at the 1994 ICPD in Cairo, the small Pacific islands will assert a loud voice on issues of population and sustainable development. At Cairo, Pacific island countries' concerns were reflected in the Port Vila Declaration on Population and Development which was adopted at the 1993 regional meeting in Vanuatu. In 1999, island delegates will be guided in their debate on the key issues by "The Pacific Response to ICPD+5: Issues and Key Actions from the Pacific Island Countries", a 15-page statement adopted at the end of the Pacific Ministerial Regional Meeting held in Nadi, Fiji on 23-24 November 1998.

Participants at the recent Ministerial Meeting, 23-24 November 1998, Nadi, Fiji, on the Pacific Response to the ICPD-PoA