Mr.
Chairman,
Honourable Member of the Diet, Madame Komiyama,
Dear colleague Kunio Waki,
Gaimusho Deputy Director General Kodama
Distinguished participants,
Ladies and Gentlemen
I would
like to thank NPO 2050 Chairman Kit Kitatani for inviting
me to participate in this annual High Level Symposium for
policy-makers on south to south collaboration, organized
in cooperation with UNDP and the Partners in Population
and Development.
It is
a special privilege to address all of you today, not only
because it is the fourth time I come to Tokyo to participate
in this symposium, but also because the subject of this
year's gathering - "ICPD revisited" - is very
timely and relevant. We had just now a wonderful speech
by Madame Yoko Komiyama setting the focus of this High Level
Symposium. The programme of the Symposium appropriately
addresses all of the key aspects of this comprehensive theme,
ranging from reproductive health and rights to women's empowerment,
aging, migration and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, to taking stock
of the progress made so far in the implementation of the
ICPD goals and assessing the challenges ahead.
We will
have an opportunity to commemorate the 10th anniversary
of the Cairo Conference and its Programme of Action here
during this High Level Symposium on Wednesday afternoon,
during a dedicated special interactive session. This precedes
by a few weeks, the formal commemoration of Cairo on 14th
October 2004 in New York by the United Nations General Assembly,
which officially opens its 59th session tomorrow.
Ten
years ago, in September 1994, the United Nations International
Conference on Population and Development drew 179 country
delegations to the Egyptian capital. Close to 11,000 people
attended, including government delegations, U.N. agencies,
inter-governmental groups, parliamentarians, non-governmental
organisations and the media, making it the largest conference
on population and development ever held. Participants enthusiastically
agreed on a global, forward-looking, 20-year Programme of
Action that sets priorities and time-bound goals to guide
national-level policy making and targeted action.
There
is no doubt that Cairo was a landmark event. Firstly, it
had the great merit of putting human beings at the heart
of concerns for sustainable development as the most important
and valuable resource of any nation. Secondly, for the first
time, it declared that women must be the centre of our efforts
to address population issues, correctly identifying reproductive
health not just as relevant to family planning but as women's
right.
It is
essential to recognize that the ICPD Programme of Action
is not just a set of goals. It lays forth a road map of
practical policy and programmatic actions, the routes to
follow to reach each of the goals. In 1999 the international
community gathered during a special session of the UN General
Assembly (known as ICPD+5) to review progress towards implementing
the ICPD goals and keep the momentum high. As Ambassador
of my country, Bangladesh, it was a great honour for me
to chair that five-year review exercise, which led to the
adoption, by consensus, of the Key Actions for the Further
Implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action. The Key
Actions focused in four priority areas: education and literacy,
reproductive health care and unmet need for contraception,
maternal mortality reduction and HIV/AIDS.
From
a broader perspective, the Programme of Action and the Key
Actions for its further implementation recognized the inextricable
links between the many dimensions of population issues and
the global fight against poverty and hunger. Population,
reproductive health, maternal mortality, education and environmental
sustainability represent critical determinants as we make
our efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals.
The
population and socio-economic development relationship has
been widely recognized as an extremely complex one. There
is not one global trend in population growth or development.
While
the world's population is growing substantially every year,
the pace of growth varies dramatically from one region to
another and each case is obviously associated with its own,
peculiar, set of social, economic, political and environmental
challenges.
Rapid
population growth is registered particularly among the group
of the fifty countries where the vast majority of people
live in extreme poverty and that are classified by the United
Nations as least developed. The combined population of the
Least Developed Countries (LDCs) is expected to nearly triple
between 2000 and 2050, rising from 658 million to 1.8 billion.
By mid
century, nearly 90 per cent of world population is expected
to be living in the developing nations. Many of these countries
are definitely the least able to absorb large increments
of people that in turn threaten sustainable development
and produce further deterioration in levels of living and
quality of life.
In the
context of sustainability of the world's resource base,
the environmental implications of growing population remain
far-reaching for the most vulnerable countries primarily
dependent on agriculture, and particularly where water is
already scarce and where land degradation and deforestation
are most severe. The combination of poverty, population
pressures and environmental degradation is a powerful destabilizing
factor driving both rural out-migration and international
migration.
But
at the core, as the World Watch Institute said in its 2003
Report, it is gender inequity that tends to contribute to
population growth and population increases tend to put pressure
on the natural environment, including biological resources.
Fast-growing
populations are shrinking cropland area per person where
countries can no longer produce enough to feed themselves.
This brings in the risk of heavy future dependence on food
imports. Shrinking grain land has also implications for
peace and security issues. A headline few years ago from
the Pan African News Agency read: "Rwanda: Land Scarcity
May Jeopardize Peace Process". With its 8.1 million
population and average family having six children, pressure
on land in Rwanda, and therefore, in all its neighbours,
is a cause of concern.
All
these will add to global migration that is expected to increase
both in volume and impact in coming years. For this reason,
this issue has become the focus of growing attention as
a global challenge to international policy makers and will
be the theme for the 2006 session of the United Nations
Commission on Population and Development. Next year's session,
instead, will be very appropriately dedicated to "Population,
development and HIV/AIDS, with particular emphasis on poverty".
Secretary-General Kofi Annan has provided leadership in
addressing international migration in various forums, actively
encouraging dialogue and interaction on the issue in its
many dimensions.
HIV/AIDS
possibly represents the deadliest epidemic in human history.
According to UNAIDS, more than 20 million people have already
died of AIDS and most of the 38 million infected people
are likely to die prematurely. About 95 per cent of those
living with HIV/AIDS are in developing countries. Indicators
of human development are slipping as the disease ruins families,
communities, economies and health systems in heavily affected
countries. Sub-Saharan Africa is the hardest hit region,
but serious HIV epidemics are also emerging elsewhere. The
Caribbean has the second-highest adult prevalence in the
world. At the same time, many countries in Asia are also
experiencing rising HIV prevalence. Anywhere AIDS is present
amongst large numbers, the economy and social fabric of
the community is in tatters, due to loss of women and men
in their most productive years and dramatic rise in the
number of orphans. The International Labour Organization
has estimated that the AIDS epidemic lowered the world's
gross domestic product by US$25 billion a year between 1992
and 2002.
The
challenge is to achieve a favourable balance between population
and available resources. In order to do so it is imperative
to ensure that population, environment, and poverty eradication
factors are fully integrated in sustainable development
policies, programmes and actions.
The
challenges faced by the Least Developed Countries are extremely
serious and demand our utmost attention. In the last ten
years, while globally the average annual rate of population
growth has decreased, the LDCs' growth rate has remained
very high at 2.4 per cent. Despite the ravages of HIV/AIDS,
other diseases and conflicts, Africa, the continent that
hosts 34 out of the 50 LDCs, is the fastest growing region
and will add approximately a billion people to its population
by 2050.
As envisaged
in the ICPD Programme of Action, a much slower rate of growth
is to be achieved, especially in the neediest areas of the
globe, in order to allow more time to attack and eradicate
poverty and hunger, while protecting the environment and
building the base for sustainable economic and human development.
Fully
recognizing the "dragging" effect of rapid population
growth upon social and economic development efforts, the
Brussels Programme of Action adopted in May 2001
for the development of the LDCs during the present decade
devoted a whole section to the "population" issues
under its commitment entitled: "Building human and
institutional capacities". The Brussels plan reconfirms
the ICPD goals and fine-tunes them to the special circumstances
and demographic trends in the LDCs, making sure that such
fundamental issues are fully integrated in the development
policies and poverty eradication strategies of these countries.
National
action needs to be continuously and reliably supported by
international cooperation. A world that spends almost a
trillion dollars a year on the military can definitely afford
to mobilize the financial resources that are needed to close
the funding gaps for building successful programmes, building
capacity to implement those programmes and sustaining crucial
partnerships among all different actors, including civil
society, advocacy groups, professional organizations, media,
parliamentarians and the United Nations system.
Continued
and increased efforts are needed to ensure critical reproductive
rights of women and girls around the globe. Their conditions,
characterized by lack of a secure base, whether in education,
information, health, equity and resources must remain our
first concern. I feel very confident when I say that empowering
women as full partners in sustainable economic and social
development is the surest strategy to combat poverty, environmental
degradation and achieving harmony and peace in human condition
at the global scale.
The
international community knows very well what needs to be
done. Today, after 10 years, we can safely say that the
Cairo agenda has not remained a paper promise. It has indeed
turned into concrete initiatives, policies, laws and programmes
that are implemented around the world and are truly making
a difference in the everyday lives of millions of people.
While numerous steps forward have been made towards meeting
many of the ICPD goals, progress has been very uneven. This
calls for redoubling our commitment to positive actions
in all of the areas identified at Cairo. I look forward
to having substantial and provoking discussions during this
Symposium with a view to building upon the achievements
of the last decade and make that further leap ahead towards
full implementation of Cairo.
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