PRESS CONFERENCE BY UNITED STATES ON PREPARATORY WORK FOR GENERAL ASSEMBLY SPECIAL SESSION ON POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCE

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE BY UNITED STATES ON PREPARATORY WORK FOR GENERAL ASSEMBLY SPECIAL SESSION ON POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCE

The Head of the United States delegation to the preparatory committee for the special session of the General Assembly on the review and appraisal of the implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development expressed the hope that agreement would be reached on a number of very important future actions that should be taken by the world community to improve the access of women to health care education and economic viability.

Julia Taft, Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, said at a Headquarters press conference on Wednesday, 24 March, that more resources would be needed to implement the various initiatives to promote reproductive health and health care rights and to expand the partnership between non-governmental organizations and government agencies.

She said the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development was a very important event and that the consensus reached on the final document by more than 179 countries was unprecedented. Those countries agreed to a series of actions that needed to be undertaken over the next 20 years to help make reproductive health care universally available to women, girls and men throughout the world.

There was commitment to achieve gender equality where boys and girls should have the same rights to inheritance, to schooling and to economic opportunity. Efforts in the Programme of Action included also a variety of issues dealing with ways of improving the quality of life for all peoples. The document was very ambitious, but what her delegation was seeing in the proceedings on the five-year review, was that the consensus achieved at Cairo was still holding. "There's a universal consensus that we must try to bring equity to the lives of women and girls throughout the world", she said. The alternative was to increase the deprivation of women, the lack of their participation in the economy of the world and to condemn them to inferior health and education, she added.

What was being looked at during the review was the progress achieved to provide a variety of services which would help women. There was a particular focus on the youth, particularly on the kind of environment being created for their future. There were more than one billion people between the ages of 15 and 20. "The decisions and actions of Governments now will really determine the extent to which they (the youth) would be able to fulfil their dreams and their hopes for the future".

The preparatory committee session was also looking at a variety of various initiatives to promote reproductive health, and health care rights,

she went on, expressing the hope that by the time the session ended by next Wednesday, the consensus would not only hold, but that agreement would be reached on a number of very important future actions that the world community should take to improve the access of women particularly to health care education and economic viability.

Another member of the United States delegation, Elizabeth Maguire, Director, Office of Population of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), said the agency had been providing assistance for the implementation of key components of the Cairo Programme of Action in more than 60 countries. USAID had, in the area of technological innovations, supported the development of female condoms which provided protection against unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. It had been expanding access to and improving the quality of reproductive health services around the world. An example of that was a programme in Egypt where high quality clinics were being supported. Similar programmes were being supported in such countries as Brazil and Mexico.

She also said USAID was supporting programmes in the area of empowerment of women and promotion of gender equity. An example of that programme was in Nigeria where USAID was working with a private sector partner to empower more than one million women to vote and at the same time improve their reproductive care rights. Mary Beth Powers, a representative of Save the Children organization, who was representing private sector partners on the United States delegation, said her organization worked in the area of reproductive health in a number of countries. It had recently began a new initiative in partnership with USAID to bring together a number of community development agencies to build networks of non-governmental organizations to address service needs.

Denese Shervington, Assistant Secretary of Population, United States Department of Health and Human Services, said the Department had been mandated by the United States Congress to provide family planning services and population research domestically. Over the past several years, the Department had been seeing more favourable allocation of resources. In terms of services, the Department was reaching out in a more concerted way to those who traditionally had been difficult to get to -- substance abusers and people with significant emotional and mental illness. Efforts were being made to address their reproductive health needs. The homeless population was also being reached. The Department was also trying to involve young people. It was pleased about what seemed to be a decreasing trend in unintended pregnancies in teens and a lot more effort and resources would be put into working with community-based organizations to address the needs of young people, she added.

Commenting on the last point, Ms. Taft said one of the things being heard consistently was that when girls and women were offered information on a wide variety of alternatives to pregnancy -- perhaps methods of contraception

US Press Conference - 3 - 25 March 1999

-- they tended to use them. Consequently the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions was decreasing. "We want to help them make decisions on the size and spacing of their families", she said.

Responding to questions, Ms. Taft said progress was being made in implementation of programmes of action. New issues and challenges were being include. Attempt was being made to incorporate the Beijing Conference Platform for Action into some of the Cairo recommendations. There was a much broader willingness to learn from each other, as well as the growing broadening of participation in various conferences. Ministers from different ministries were participating in the meetings, sharing and exchanging experiences.

Asked how effective NGOs had been in preaching the message of Cairo, Ms. Powers of Save the Children, said it depended on individual organizations. She had heard the story of women's organizations in Zimbabwe banding together to demand a change in the social norms of the country. A lot of NGOs had caught the message. Her organization which was not very active at the Cairo Conference was now trying to promote its message. The Cairo final document was an important one which was not only about women's issues, but those of children as well. New voices from the non-governmental organization community would help to carry the message further.

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