UNITED NATIONS POPULATION FUND OPENS AFRICA MEETING
Press Release
AFR/26
POP/653
UNITED NATIONS POPULATION FUND OPENS AFRICA MEETING
19971110 HARARE, 10 November (UN Information Service) -- The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) opened its biennial regional meeting for Africa in Harare this morning.The meeting, which comes three years after the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994, is taking place at a critical time in the history of population development in Africa.
Opening the meeting today, Zimbabwe's Planning Commissioner, Richard Hove, who was represented by the Director in the National Economic Planning Commission, welcomed the meeting's focus to reshape the UNFPA strategy for population assistance in view of changing realities within sub-Saharan Africa and the United Nations itself.
Although the Cairo Programme of Action was a carefully negotiated blueprint, strategies to implement it needed constant review, adjustment and refocussing as the field terrain changed, he said. Strategies of assistance would have to be different; between those countries in political turmoil, to those where structural adjustment and other economic problems had weakened national capacities to implement population programmes. Mr. Hove further pointed out that special approaches were also needed in the case of those countries where family planning programmes had been affected by the advent of HIV/AIDS.
In her statement when the meeting began, Director of the UNFPA Africa Region, Virginia Ofosu-Amaah, highlighted the objective of the regional meeting in Harare as a review, during which there would be identification of problems and issues that needed to be addressed at the regional level, as preparation began for the next cycle of the regional programme. The get- together was part of consensus and team building in the Africa Division, she said.
On programme implementation, Ms. Ofosu-Amaah told the meeting that she was impressed and encouraged by the dynamism with which African countries had moved forward in developing strategies and plans of action for a broader reproductive approach, for improving the quality of care and making sure they
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met the needs of individual women and men. As a result of many years of advocacy, the highest levels of leadership in almost all Africa had become aware of the importance of population factors to the achievement of sustainable development, she observed.
The five-day meeting, which ends on Friday, 14 November, is being attended by many UNFPA officials including UNFPA Deputy Executive Director, Kerstin Trone, and about 110 UNFPA country office representatives, national programme officers, three country support teams and officials from UNFPA headquarters in New York.
The Executive Director of UNFPA, Dr. Nafis Sadik, is expected in Harare before the conclusion of the regional meeting.
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