Creating a New Consensus on Population

The Politics of Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, and Women's Empowerment

Jyoti Shankar Singh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317972792
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

Population growth, reproductive health and reproductive rights are amongst the most pressing issues facing governments and the international community. Since the world's governments agreed for the first time on far-reaching and enlightened population policies at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, a good deal of progress has been made on these issues, but major challenges remain.

This fully updated edition of Creating a New Consensus on Population charts international progress on efforts to address population and development, reproductive health, reproductive rights, religion, contraception and the empowerment of women. Historical coverage includes the lead up process to the ICPD, the conference itself and the global consensus and the ICPD Programme of Action that resulted. The book then turns to how population issues have developed over the past decade and a half including follow-up and implementation at the international level by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and other UN agencies and organizations. Key international events are covered including the 1999 ICPD+5, Millennium Summit 2000, ICPD+10 and the 2005 MDG+5 as well as relevant regional events. The book also examines the reorientation of policies and programmes and implementation at national levels across the world. Crucially, it looks at emerging issues and partnerships including the increasing role of NGOs, women's groups, youth groups, foundations, public-private partnerships and other non-state stakeholders.

Written by Jyoti Shankar Singh, former ICPD Executive Coordinator, this is the definitive account of how the international community has engaged with population issues and policies and it offers insight into both the ongoing challenges as well as how an international consensus can be forged on crucial global issues. It is essential reading for all those involved in population, health and development issues and policies world-wide.

1

Bucharest, Mexico and Cairo

The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), which was held in Cairo, Egypt, from 5 to 13 September 1994, has earned a place in history as one of the most significant global conferences ever. It radically transformed the views and perceptions of thousands of policymakers and programme managers on how population policies and programmes should be formulated and implemented in future – moving away from top-down approaches and pre-planned demographic goals to those that would seek to respond to the needs of ‘couples and individuals’. At the same time, the unparalleled exposure it received through newspapers, radio, television and the internet helped to bring issues relating to reproductive health, reproductive rights and women’s empowerment to the attention of millions of women and men around the world, and may indeed have enhanced their understanding and appreciation of these issues in a positive manner.

Cairo also set clear benchmarks to measure progress over a period of two decades (1995–2015) towards goals relating to the reduction of infant, child and maternal mortality; ensuring the availability of reproductive health services to all those who need them; education, particularly of young girls and women; and the empowerment of women. Finally, it brought to the fore the critical role of the non-governmental sector in population activities, and firmly established the concept of ‘partnership’ between governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Cairo broke new ground in so many ways that it must be regarded as a unique event. But it was also part of a series of United Nations (UN) conferences on population, which included the World Population Conference (WPC) held in Bucharest, Romania, in 1974 and the International Conference on Population held in Mexico City, Mexico, in 1984.

The Bucharest, Mexico and Cairo conferences shared one common characteristic: all three were global intergovernmental conferences organized by the UN. But to complete the record, I should mention two other world conferences on population, sponsored by the Population Division of the UN in cooperation with the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) – Rome (31 August–10 September 1954) and Belgrade (30 August–10 September 1965). These two conferences were designed as scientific meetings of individual experts (drawn mostly from among the community of demographers) and did not, therefore, formulate any substantive resolutions or recommendations on population and development issues.

Various sessions of the Rome and Belgrade conferences focused on themes and issues of professional concern to individual experts, but taken together they also reflected emerging issues and concerns in the population field. This was particularly noticeable at the Belgrade Conference where, for the first time, a significant number of participants from developing countries were in attendance. On the basis of the latest available information, many of the papers submitted to the Belgrade Conference sought to examine the interrelationship between population growth and economic and social development, especially for developing countries, and as the report of the Conference points out, it provided a forum ‘where experts could examine together the present and prospective trends in population growth, composition and distribution, the problems arising from these trends, and the techniques required to improve the knowledge of such trends in many parts of the world’ (UN, 1966, p2). Proposing or recommending action on questions of policy was not within the remit of the Conference.

In its organization, format and procedures, the Bucharest Conference marked a complete departure from the Rome and Belgrade conferences. In contrast to these two conferences, which were attended by participants in their individual capacity, Bucharest was an intergovernmental conference. It was attended by 138 governmental delegations from the member states of the UN and its specialized agencies, and its recommendations and decisions were negotiated and formulated on the basis of the UN rules and practices governing intergovernmental meetings. The Mexico Conference, organized ten years after Bucharest, attracted the participation of 146 governments, and the Cairo Conference, which came ten years after Mexico City, was attended by 179 governments as full participants and by the Palestinian Authority, and six governments that are associate members of the UN regional commissions, as observers. The European Union (EU), following the practice established at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), was also given full participant status at Cairo.¹

As in the case of all major UN conferences, the intergovernmental character of the Bucharest, Mexico and Cairo conferences implied the fulfilment of several organizational and political requirements by the UN in preparing for and holding such global events. First of these is always the need to ensure internal coordination. In addition to the unit or units with overall responsibility, many other units of the UN (Finance, Conference Services, Public Information, the Secretariat of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and Security) have specific functional responsibilities regarding preparations for and organization of UN conferences; and regular and effective collaboration among them is indispensable for the success of such conferences.

The financial arrangements for the conferences follow specially defined procedures and can prove to be quite complicated. A government that offers to host a UN conference is required to cover the difference in costs between holding the Conference at a UN site (e.g. New York, Geneva or Vienna) and the site proposed by the host. Though working out the cost difference ought to be a straightforward matter, it never is, and lengthy and protracted negotiations are needed to finalize the financial arrangements with the host government. The regular UN budget should in principle cover all the other costs relating to staff, documentation, preparatory meetings and so on. But extra-budgetary contributions are almost always needed to pay for additional costs and these require a good deal of initiative and imagination in fund-raising efforts. This was certainly the case with all three intergovernmental population conferences.

Each major UN conference is expected to be preceded by regional conferences, national preparatory activities, technical workshops and meetings, and meetings of its international preparatory committee. Participating in the planning, organization or coordination of these events and activities worldwide is a major exercise in logistics, patience and diplomacy for the conference secretariat. Most importantly, the preparatory process needs to be designed in such a way as to mobilize the support of national delegations for the emergence of an international consensus on major themes and issues. The practice of consensus-building as it has evolved within the UN can sometimes mean that a single delegation can block an agreement among all the other delegations. More often, consensus is arrived at through negotiations among a bewildering variety of regional, political, economic and other interested groups; and the countries that still do not support the consensus text, or parts thereof, may choose to state their reservations for the record.

When the Bucharest Conference took place, the UN practice still allowed voting, and it was used extensively there. In the case of Mexico, it was used once in the Main Committee and twice in the Plenary Session. Voting was not used at all during the Cairo process, and on one occasion when Fred Sai, Chairman of the Preparatory Committee, thought aloud of the possibility of holding a straw vote to determine the preference of members of the Preparatory Committee, his rumination caused considerable consternation among all the major groups, including the Group of 77 (G77) and the EU. Over the last decade, consensus-building has indeed become the accepted norm at the UN.

In order to obtain an overview of the linkages among the three global population conferences, it is useful first to look at what happened at the WPC and the International Conference on Population, in particular their legislative history, organizational and preparatory activities, the structure of the secretariat, finances, host country arrangements, highlights of the political debate and the main achievements. On the ICPD this chapter covers the legislative, organizational and preparatory aspects, leaving the technical, policy and political issues to be elaborated and analysed in the subsequent chapters.

BUCHAREST CONFERENCE

The WPC (Bucharest, 19–30 August 1974) was organized under the auspices of ECOSOC, which approved a resolution on 3 April 1970 authorizing the convening of an intergovernmental conference on population by the UN in 1974 (ECOSOC Resolution 1484 (XLVIII)). According to this resolution, the objective of the WPC was to consider basic demographic problems, their relationship with economic and social development, and population policies and action programmes needed to promote human welfare and development.

Two years later, ECOSOC assigned to the UN Population Commission the task of serving as the intergovernmental preparatory body for the Conference (ECOSOC Resolution 1672 (LID, 2 June 1972)). At the same time, it requested the Secretary General to appoint within the Department of Economic and Social Affairs a Secretary General for the Conference. In October 1972, Secretary General Kurt Waldheim appointed Antonio Carrillo Flores, former Foreign and Finance Minister of Mexico, to be Secretary General of the Conference.

The US gave the proposed Conference a lot of encouragement and support, because of individuals like William H. Draper Jr and Philander Claxton. Mr Draper, who was a tireless campaigner for the cause of population, enjoyed a great deal of influence in the US administration in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was designated by the US as its chief representative to the Population Commission, and it was mainly because of his efforts that the US actively supported the idea of a global intergovernmental population conference to be organized by the UN. I was told at the time that it was Mr Draper, along with Mr Claxton, who had persuaded the Population Commission to recommend the convening of an intergovernmental conference rather than a conference of demographers and experts along the lines of the Rome and Belgrade conferences. Furthermore, it was Mr Draper who suggested to Mr Waldheim the name of Mr Carrillo Flores, whom he had personally known for many years, for the position of Conference Secretary General. Mr Draper was also an active fund-raiser for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA, known as the UN Fund for Population Activities until 1987). Mr Claxton, who was the senior State Department official in charge of population, demonstrated a great deal of official and personal interest in the Conference, and worked closely with Mr Draper in developing detailed organizational proposals for a global intergovernmental conference. Both of them also played an active role at the Conference itself.

The idea of an intergovernmental conference was also supported by many of the developed countries that had begun to contribute to population programmes, through UNFPA as well as bilateral channels. The developing countries went along with the idea, though one cannot say that in the beginning they were very enthusiastic. As the discussion on the Conference evolved over 1971–1972, Asian and European countries became more supportive.

Finding a host country for the proposed event was not easy. An attempt was made first to find a developing country that could host the event, but this did not prove possible. The persistent search finally produced an invitation from the Romanian government and it was accepted by ECOSOC at its 54th Session in May 1973.

The Population Commission met three times as the intergovernmental preparatory body for the Bucharest Conference: first Special Session, 7–15 August 1972; second Special Session, 19–30 March 1973; and third Special Session, 4–15 March 1974. The Commission also considered several aspects of the preparatory work for the WPC at its 17th regular Session (29 October–9 November 1973).

Four technical symposia were organized in preparation for the Conference: the Symposium on Population and Development (Cairo, 4–14 June 1973); the Symposium on Population and the Family (Honolulu, 6–15 August 1973); the Symposium on Population, Resources and the Environment (Stockholm, 26 September–3 October 1973); and the Symposium on Population and Human Rights (Amsterdam, 21–29 January 1974). The most important document for the Conference – the draft World Population Plan of Action (WPPA) – was prepared by the Population Division with the assistance of an Advisory Committee of Experts on the WPC, various UN bodies and a variety of technical studies. The Advisory Committee met three times, in June 1972, July 1973 and February 1974 (UN, 1975).

The draft Plan was also discussed with representatives of governments at a series of five regional consultative meetings held in 1974 at San Jose, Costa Rica (15–19 April), Bangkok (7–10 May), Addis Ababa (13–16 May), Damascus (21–23 May) and Geneva (29–31 May). Countries in the Asia and Pacific region had earlier organized a fully fledged Asian Population Conference in New Delhi (1971).

The primary responsibility for organizing the Bucharest Conference was given to a small Conference Secretariat (with 12–14 professional staff members and a similar number of support staff) within the UN. It was headed by Mr Carrillo Flores, Secretary General of the Conference. Leon Tabah, Director of the UN Population Division, was named as one of his deputies to take care of the substantive and technical preparations, while Ralph Townley was named as the other deputy to look after practical arrangements.

The third unit involved in the preparatory activities was the World Population Year (WPY) Secretariat set up by Rafael Salas, Executive Director of the UNFPA. A couple of years after the General Assembly (GA) had designated 1974 as WPY (the centrepiece of which was to be the WPC), ECOSOC gave the responsibility for organizing WPY-related activities to the Executive Director of UNFPA (ECOSOC Resolution 1672 (LII), 20 June 1972). Moving swiftly after the ECOSOC decision, Mr Salas set up a WPY Secretariat within UNFPA (with 10–12 professional staff and 12–14 support staff). Tarzie Vittachi, a well-known Sri Lankan journalist and recipient of the Ramon Maqsaysay award for journalism, was appointed Executive Secretary. At about the same time, I was invited by Mr Salas to join the WPY Secretariat. As Secretary General of the World Assembly of Youth (WAY), I had met Mr Salas a couple of times in 1971–1972 in order to obtain UNFPA support for youth and population education projects in several countries. When he decided to establish the WPY Secretariat, he thought of me as someone who could help to promote WPY-related activities among NGOs. I was then about to finish my assignment with WAY and was very happy and honoured to accept Mr Salas’ invitation. I came to UNFPA as the NGO Liaison Officer in 1972, and was appointed as Mr Vittachi’s deputy in 1973.

Many separate units were thus in charge of various WPC–WPY activities. The four technical symposia were organized by the UN Population Division and the regional consultations by the UN regional commissions. A large number of other preparatory events involving governmental authorities, academics, church and religious groups and NGOs, which sought to focus public and media attention on the urgency and importance of population issues, was organized by the WPY Secretariat. The WPC Secretariat, which was under the overall supervision of Mr Carrillo Flores and the day-to-day supervision of Mr Townley, was responsible for negotiating the host country arrangements, mobilizing extra-budgetary contributions and managing external relations.

The ECOSOC resolution that gave the responsibility for the WPY to Mr Salas had urged the Secretary General of the Conference and the Executive Director of UNFPA ‘to cooperate to the extent necessary to ensure that preparations for the WPC and WPY proceed smoothly, bearing in mind the complementary nature of the activities of the Year and the Conference’ (ECOSOC Resolution 1672 (LII)). In this context, I recall regular meetings and consultations between the WPC Secretariat, including the Population Division, and the WPY Secretariat, but I also remember that the relationship between these secretariats and units was not always free of tensions.

In his book People: An International Choice, Mr Salas makes a wry comment on this organizational arrangement:

This was a curious division of labour: the United Nations in designating previous Years and their accompanying conferences had entrusted the management of both events to one specific body. Normally, this was a special secretariat. But in 1972 the Fund already had worldwide visibility, and many participants in the preparatory committees thought it should be given a more definitive part in the celebration. Stanley Johnson, the IPPF representative, persuaded his Government’s representative [UK] to propose an active role for UNFPA. What came out in the final ECOSOC resolution was an ingenious device of not giving total responsibility either to the Fund or the Population Division. The responsibility for the WPY was given to the Executive Director and the responsibility for the Conference to a Secretary-General staffed by the Population Division. A very unusual arrangement somehow obscured by the agreement that the World Population Conference was to be the highlight of the Year. (Salas, 1977, p101–102)

What were the reasons for this ‘very unusual arrangement’? I can think of two. The other major UN conference in the early 1970s – the UN Conference on the Environment (Stockholm, 1972) – had a full-time Secretary General (Maurice Strong) and its own Secretariat. This precedent might have been in the minds of those who finalized the secretariat arrangements during 1970–1972 for the WPC. Given the fact that the UN Population Division was the UN unit that had sponsored the two earlier population conferences, it would also have seemed logical to make it part of the WPC Secretariat and to give it the substantive responsibility for Bucharest. As regards UNFPA’s role in the Conference, it had begun to attract a certain amount of attention among governments as well as NGOs as a funding organization, and it may have been argued that it ought to have continued strengthening its role in this regard rather than taking on additional responsibilities for a world conference. In the end, because of WPY activities and Mr Salas’ own efforts, UNFPA acquired much greater visibility in the period leading up to Bucharest.

The division of the preparatory activities into separate sectors – technical activities, organizational matters, external relations and coordination, and awareness creation and information activities – was perhaps one of the reasons why the political debates on economic and development issues (involving in particular the concept of a new international economic order (NIEO), the subject of two resolutions adopted over the strong objections of the US and several other industrialized countries at the sixth Special Session of the GA in 1973 (GA Resolutions 3201 and 3202 (S-VI)) did not receive appropriate attention at the technical or regional events. These meetings were attended mostly by technical and professional participants and focused on demographic issues. To the extent that these individuals knew of the controversy and acrimony between Western countries and members of the G77 over NIEO issues, they felt that these were not directly relevant to the preparations for a conference on population. The furious debate that erupted at the Bucharest Conference between supporters of population activities and the proponents of the NIEO thus came as a surprise to the technical advisers attached to many of the national delegations, as it did to m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• List of acronyms and abbreviations
• 1 Bucharest, Mexico and Cairo
• 2 From Family Planning to Reproductive Health
• 3 Population and Development
• 4 The Empowerment of Women
• 5 Partnership with the Non-Governmental Sector
• 6 Mobilizing Resources for Population Programmes
• 7 The Cairo Agenda and the International Community
• 8 Institutional Response
• 9 Implementing the Cairo Agenda
• Notes and references
• Bibliography
• Appendix: Chronology of major events relating to the International Conference on Population and Development
• Index