PRESS CONFERENCE BY EUROPEAN NGOS ON IMPLEMENTING CAIRO COMMITMENTS
Press Briefing
PRESS CONFERENCE BY EUROPEAN NGOS ON IMPLEMENTING CAIRO COMMITMENTS
19990330
"Put your money where your mouth is", the Media Officer of the World Population Foundation of the Netherlands implored the world community at a Headquarters press conference today. She was urging it to fulfil immediately the commitments made five years ago at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo.
Jokevan Kampen was joined by the Overseas Director of Population Concern (United Kingdom), Sandra Kabir, and the Director of the Irish Family Planning Association, Tony O'Brian -- all members of a European-based network of non- governmental organizations on sexual and reproductive health programmes, which sponsored the press conference. The network comprises 23 European non- governmental organizations and family planning associations.
One day before the scheduled conclusion of the Commission on Population and Development acting as the preparatory committee for the General Assembly's five-year review of the implementation of the Cairo Programme of Action, Ms. Kabir said that the group of non-governmental organization participants in the Cairo + 5 Preparatory Committee had formulated a statement to be used by delegations and by the larger non-governmental organization community on the need for increasing available funds for implementing the ICPD goals.
She said that non-governmental organizations working in the field with "their feet on the ground" knew that although some progress had been made since Cairo, and ways had been found to implement quality reproductive and sexual health services, donor nations and developed countries were not making available the resources to which they had committed in the 1994 Programme of Action. "Without money, you can't do anything", she said. There might be a commitment, a vision and a dream, but in the absence of financing, not much could be done.
Their proposal would make available at least 5 per cent of official development assistance for sexual and reproductive health activities, she went on. Of that amount, 20 per cent would be made available for young people's programmes. Those programmes were seriously under-funded, although it was young people who were most affected by the HIV infections and maternal mortality, including unsafe abortions.
Continuing, she said that developed countries should make available 0.7 per cent of their gross national product (GNP) for overseas assistance. The group also strongly supported the concept of "20/20", by which 20 per cent of all nations' budgets should be allocated to social development.
She said quality sexual and reproductive health services and programmes could be made more widely available, but to do so required more than a commitment; it required resources. Sweet talk was of no use when the money was not made available for such programmes.
European NGO Press Conference - 2 - 30 March 1999
Their other important message concerned values and ethics and the battles about who should be in control of women's bodies and lives, Ms. Kabir said. However impatient or tired the participants might be, they had to keep the pressure on the delegations to maintain, at the very least, the language of Cairo and Beijing, and to stretch beyond that. A part of that thrust was to make more resources available. What she sought at the close of the session tomorrow -- if it closed tomorrow -- was a commitment for additional resources or the reallocation of existing ones into social development and sexual and reproductive health programmes.
She recalled the closing remarks made in Cairo by the Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Dr. Nafis Sadik, who had said that without States' commitments, the Action Programme would remain a "paper promise". Five years later, words had become reality, and the partnerships needed to implement the Programme had been realized.
A correspondent referred to Ms. Kabir's comment that the Preparatory Committee might not finish tomorrow, and asked her to identify the "big stumbling blocks".
Ms. Kabir said that her perspective was mixed. From the perspective of the South, for the "Group of 77" developing countries and China to reach consensus in the allowed time-frame was quite difficult, and more time should have been factored in for that. The Preparatory Committee should have been allotted many more than five working days, or pre-Preparatory Committee meetings. People had been shortsighted in that regard. Hopefully, the session would finish by tomorrow night. So far, the Group of 77 had discussed up to chapter 3 now, which meant there were three more chapters left.
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