WINNERS OF 1996 UNITED NATIONS POPULATION AWARD ANNOUNCED

23 February 1996

Press Release
POP/606

WINNERS OF 1996 UNITED NATIONS POPULATION AWARD ANNOUNCED

19960223 NEW YORK, 23 February (UNFPA) -- A leading advocate for population policies and programmes in the Philippines and internationally, Leticia Ramos- Shahani, and Pathfinder International, a United States-based non-governmental organization that helps start and manage population programmes worldwide, will share the 1996 Population Award, it was announced today by the Chairman of the Committee of the United Nations Population Award, Julio Armando Martini Herrera, Permanent Representative of Guatemala to the United Nations.

The award is presented annually by the Committee to individuals and institutions which have made outstanding contributions to increasing the awareness of population problems and to their solutions. Each winner will receive a diploma, a gold medal and a monetary prize of $12,500.

A member of the Philippine Senate, Leticia Ramos-Shahani was chosen for her more than 30 years of leadership in the field of population. In the Philippines, Ms. Shahani is the country's leading exponent of the issue of population and its implications for social development, public health and environmental sustainability. In 1988, at a time when virtually no one in the Philippine Congress was talking publicly about population, she spearheaded the establishment of the Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development. She sponsored the Shahani Bill, intended to strengthen the Philippines's new population policy and the Commission on Population of the Philippines. She has been widely credited with helping shape the positive population policies of President Fidel V. Ramos.

Ms. Shahani is active internationally as a member of the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development, the Global Committee of Parliamentarians on Population and Development and the International Green Cross. She has also served in the United Nations and was Secretary-General of the World Conference to Review and Appraise the United Nations Decade for Women, held in Nairobi, Kenya in 1985.

Pathfinder International was chosen for its 38 years of sustained effort in developing and improving family planning programmes and creating awareness of population issues. Founded in 1957, Pathfinder was hard at work in the field providing funds, contraceptive supplies, and technical assistance long before the United States Government began supporting population programmes.

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Pathfinder has pioneered many advances in family planning - often in challenging or even hostile circumstances -- through a policy of investing in people and organizations committed to bringing family planning services to those most in need. To date, 29 family planning associations have been launched with grants from Pathfinder.

Pathfinder has supported more than 2,000 programmes in more than 30 countries including training programmes, technical assistance, programmes for adolescents, service delivery models, and integrated family planning and HIV/AIDS/sexually transmitted disease prevention programmes. In several instances, Pathfinder, through privately raised funds, has sustained national programmes when foreign assistance funds were unavailable.

The two winners will receive the award at a ceremony to be held later this year. The Committee of the United Nations Population Award is made up of representatives of 10 United Nations Member States elected by the Economic and Social Council for a term of three years. The current members are: Belarus, Burundi, Cameroon, El Salvador, Guatemala, India, Japan, Netherlands, Philippines and Zaire. United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Dr. Nafis Sadik, serve as ex-officio members. In addition, the Committee has five eminent individuals as honorary members who serve in an advisory capacity for a renewable term of three years.

There were 24 nominations for the 1996 award including 16 individuals and 8 institutions. Nominations can be made by governments of Member States, intergovernmental organizations engaged in population-related activities, population-related non-governmental organizations having consultative status with the United Nations, university professors of population or population- related studies, heads of population-related institutions and past laureates.

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