PRESS BRIEFING BY UN POPULATION FUND

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING BY UN POPULATION FUND

On 12 October the United Nations will commemorate the world’s population reaching 6 billion people, said Stan Bernstein, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Senior Researcher and principal author of The State of the World’s Population 1999 report, at a Headquarters press briefing this morning. He was introduced by UNFPA Information Officer William Ryan, who is also the report’s managing editor.

The report, entitled “6 Billion: A Time for Choices”, states that it had taken just 12 years to reach this figure from the time the world population was at 5 billion. That, said Mr. Bernstein, indicated a combination of successes and challenges. The successes came in the form of the reduction of mortality rates and in the improvement of education.

As challenges, he mentioned the 585,000 women who died each year as a result of being pregnant, the 350 million couples with no access to a range of choices to implement their reproductive desires, and the 120 million couples who did not want to have a child in the next year and who lacked the information, the services or the support from their family and community.

He said 1999 was the five-year anniversary of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo, and a review process of what had occurred during the past five years had been completed. That review had resulted in the conclusion that significant progress had been made, and that the Cairo Programme of Action was practical, despite some difficulties.

He said that the Programme of Action called for: universal access to reproductive health services; universal education and special attention to reducing the gender gap in education; reduction of gender inequality and the elimination of violence against women; and better monitoring and increased efforts to give countries the opportunity to let people make voluntary choices about their families, in order to slow the rate of population growth and create the opportunity for greater economic and social development.

The review also indicated, however, that the resources required to implement the Programme of Action were not yet available, he added. In the year 2000, $17 billion a year would be needed to implement the broad reproductive health package that was considered at Cairo. At the moment, the donor countries, who had pledged two thirds of that amount, had only raised $2 billion a year, one third of the required amount. The developing countries had raised about two thirds of the amount they had pledged.

Population Fund Briefing - 2 - 22 September 1999

"If we do not raise the resources, mobilize the political will, involve communities in the planning, implementation and monitoring of these programmes, there will be retarded development and slower growth of opportunity”, he said. “The chance for accelerated social and economic development that comes from decreases in fertility rates may be squandered."

The choices were very clear, he concluded. Recently, in the United Nations General Assembly's Special Session, the world community had recommitted itself to the resource estimates and to raising the money. He hoped that the world held them to their word.

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