Southpac News

1^st Pacific Regional HIV/AIDS and STD Conference

Over 200 participants converged in Nadi, Fiji, on 23-25 February for the "First Pacific Regional HIV/AIDS and STD Conference". The attendees came from 22 Pacific Island Countries, including the French-speaking ones, as well as regional institutions, embassies and multilateral agencies. The involvement of NGOs, including the churches, and youth representatives was particularly prominent. The Conference was organized by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community with funding support from bilateral donors and United Nations programmes in the Pacific.

One for the album for participants at the HIV/AIDS Conference

To cater for the large number of participants, the conference was organized into four "streams" for paper presentations, workshops and panel discussions. The Conference inevitably had a wide-ranging agenda. Besides drama presentations by theatre groups, youth forums, and live testimonies of HIV/AIDS victims, the various sessions covered topics such as women and HIV/AIDS, nutrition and HIV, peer education, care and support, testing and confidentiality, developing resources for health workers, reaching the difficult to reach, approaches to medical practice, etc. Discussions on the more controversial topics were lively and wide media coverage raised awareness about the complex issues in the Pacific islands beyond the Fiji venue of the conference.

All the UN agencies involved in the UNAIDS effort in the South Pacific including UNFPA were represented at the Conference. Besides Mr. Jose Ferraris, the UNFPA Representative in Fiji, Dr. Salesi Katoanga and Ms. Susan Aradeon, UNFPA CST advisers, attended as resource person and observer respectively. Mr. Hans de Knocke van der Meulen of the Department of Country Planning and Programme Development, UNAIDS, Geneva, took advantage of the conference to hold discussions with partner agencies in the South Pacific UNAIDS programme.

The pilot phase of a regional project on adolescent reproductive health (ARH) was launched at a planning and pre-implementation workshop in the Centra Hotel, Suva, by the UNFPA Representative, Mr. Jose Ferraris, on 27 April. Three representatives from each of the three pilot countries, namely Marshall Islands, Samoa and Solomon Islands, joined with resource persons from Family Planning Australia, UNFPA (Fiji) Sub-Regional Office, and the UNFPA CST, for two days (27-28 April) of intensive project formulation, including generating of ideas, activity planning, and scheduling of implementation plans.

Participants at the Inter-Agency Meeting prior to the ARH Pilot Project Planning Workshop

The workshop was the culmination of a series of three UNFPA/Family Planning Australia fact-finding missions to the three pilot countries undertaken between 16 March and 17 April 1999. Dr. Salesi Katoanga, CST Adviser on Reproductive Health (Programme) and Ms. Praveen Sharma, Senior Programme Assistant, UNFPA Suva joined Ms. Angela Taggart, Pacific Projects Officer, Family Planning Australia, in the feasibility missions to Marshall Islands (9-12 March) and the Solomon Islands (14-17 April).

The pilot phase of the proposed "Youth Friendly Adolescent Reproductive Health Services Project", for the February 1999 to May 2000 duration, is budgeted at $246,000. It is expected to achieve the following objectives: improve access for adolescents to both information and services provided by youth-focused NGOs and government departments in the three pilot countries; enhance the capacity of youth NGOs and strengthen partnership between national institutions; and raise community support for a larger regional ARH project to eventually cover eight Pacific island countries.

The three pilot countries will implement strategies and activities that are relevant to their situation and that are appropriate given the available resources. Family Planning Australia will be responsible for the overall project management, as the executing agency. At the country level, partnerships will be forged between youth and reproductive health – focussed NGOs, Ministries of Health and Education and other relevant stakeholders which provide or support the provision of reproductive health information and services to youth.

The justification for greater efforts to address the special needs of adolescents in reproductive health is not in serious dispute anymore. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is in the forefront in advocating adolescent sexual and reproductive health and urging the international community to target more resources at young people, especially women, to reduce population growth and as the key to national social and economic development.

The UNFPA Sub-Regional Office for the Pacific organised an Expert Group Meeting on Model Population and Housing Questionnaires for the 2000 Round of Censuses in the Pacific, held at the Forum Secretariat in Suva 17-19 May 1999. The model questionnaires under review had been developed and field tested in 1998 in a sample of countries by Mr. Laurie Lewis, former UNFPA CST Population Statistics Adviser. The aim of the meeting was to bring together senior government statisticians to review the model questionnaires, consider how countries could map the model questionnaires to their national censuses, determine the extent to which additional topics can be standardised, as well as deliberate on further coordinated Regional Strategies for the 2000 Round of Censuses in the Pacific.

Participants and resource persons at the 2000 Rounf of Census Expert Group Meeting, Suva, Fiji.

The countries selected for the Expert Group Meeting included Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Samoa and Vanuatu where the model questions were tested. Unfortunately, Marshall Islands could not attend as their census was under preparation for this year and officials were pre-occupied. In addition, Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Tuvalu were invited on the basis that they had recently conducted or will soon be conducting their next census. Fiji participated as the host country.

The resource personnel for the meeting were drawn from the agencies that have been actively supporting the 2000 Round of Censuses in the Pacific including the UN Statistical Division (Mr. Iqbal Alam), the US Bureau of the Census (Mr. Michael Levin) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (Ms. Christine McMurrary). Secretariat support and additional resource persons were provided by the UNFPA Field Office and the UNFPA Country Support Team. Mr. Laurie Lewis was a technical consultant. The meeting was chaired by Mr. Timoci Bainimarama, Government Statistician, Fiji.

The group reviewed the latest developments in the Integrated Microcomputer Processing System (IMPS) and, as a case study, discussed the recent experiences of the Fiji Bureau of Statistics in its 1996 census. It affirmed that IMPS will be used as the basic data processing system for the 2000 Round of Censuses. For the purpose of illustrating the use of IMPS, a data processing system based on model Pacific island forms was demonstrated.

The meeting recommended that IMPS should continue to be developed and refined as the Pacific regional data processing system based on the core questionnaires. Standard regional edits and tabulations should be developed based on the core questionnaires.

The Group emphasized the importance of training on all aspects of census-taking to upgrade the skills of national staff.

The Expert Group recommended that SPC (The Secretariat of the Pacific Community) should be urged to undertake the coordinating function for the regional population and housing censuses, including development of core questionnaires, preparation of manuals and other documentation, data processing, tabulation and analysis. In addition, SPC should prepare a roster of national experts skilled in various areas of census-taking to foster South-South collaboration, promote the use of regional technical expertise, and strengthen national capacities. UNFPA should be approached to organise a meeting of donors to mobilize funding resources for the regional initiatives concerning the 2000 Round of Censuses.

Pacific POPIN

The 2^nd Pacific POPIN (Population Information) Consultative Meeting and Information Technology Training Workshop was held from the 17-21 May 1999 at the University of the South Pacific. Six countries (Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu) were represented in the Meeting (17-18 May) followed by an Information Technology Training (18-21 May). The purpose of the Consultative Meeting was to review the activities of the POPIN Network since 1995 and to plan for the next three years and that of the Workshop to strengthen the IT capacity of personnel involved in the provision of population information.

The welcoming address was given by Dr. Rajesh Chandra, Acting-Vice Chancellor, University of the South Pacific. Dr. Nibhon Debavalya, Director, Population and Rural and Urban Develop-ment Division (PRUDD), ESCAP, in his address, emphasized the critical role of information tech-nology in promoting social development

Participants and resource persons at the Pacific POPIN Workshop in Suva, Fiji

The eight Pacific Island participants were trained in the various aspects of Internet, from the basics of HTML, to web page designing with Frontpage98, email usage and subscription and demographic research through the Internet. The resource personnel for the meeting were drawn from staff of the University of the South Pacific. Dr. Ja-Kyung Yoo, Chief of Population Information and Communication Unit, PRUDD, ESCAP, was the main resource person. Mr. Sefo Farpapa’u, Documentalist, UNFPA Country Support Team for the South Pacific, made a presentation on emailing functions and using Netscape 4.04 browser.

The Meeting was hosted by the University of the South Pacific with funding from UNFPA through ESCAP and was organized by Ms. Elizabeth Fong, Regional Pacific POPIN Coordinator.

Twenty-three participants from 9 Pacific Island Countries, namely, Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu attended a week-long Workshop on "Upskilling of Gender Trainers" on 22-29 May, in Nadi, Fiji, which was organized by the UNIFEM Pacific Sub-Regional Programme Office. The main objective of the workshop was to upgrade the knowledge and skills of UNIFEM-trained gender and political awareness trainers, while the workshop also reviewed study reports and discussed future work plans. Other topics discussed at the Workshop included "Gender and Trade", "Enterprise Development Training", and ‘Gender through Pacific Eyes: A Guide to Programme and Policy Analysis".

Outside of UNIFEM, resource persons for the workshop were drawn from the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, the South Pacific Forum Secretariat, private consultants, UNDP, and UNFPA.

Tongan participants at the 'Upskilling of Gender Trainers' workshop, Nadi, Fiji

Gender as a population and development variable was a major part of the upskilling content of the workshop. For this reason, the technical support of the UNFPA CST was requested to facilitate two sessions on 25 May. Dr. Salesi Katoanga, Adviser on Reproductive Health (Programme) made a presentation on "Gender as a Development Issue", elaborating on the difference between gender and sex, gender roles, and gender issues in development in the Pacific context.

Under the title of "Population, Gender and Development", Mr. William House, Adviser on Population Policies and Development Strategies, outlined the importance of gender balance as a major contributor in the development process and the need for women to be fully integrated for reasons of national economic progress and equity. Mr. House’s discussion of the issue of women’s participation in the labour force and the prevailing constraints on their economic productivity was enriched by presentation of findings from an analysis of a survey of male and female employees in Fiji conducted under the auspices of a UNFPA-funded and ILO-executed project in 1997. His analysis showed that "discriminatory" practices on the part of employers accounted for part of the pay differentials between male and female workers

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