COMMISSION COMMUNITY

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid
Executive Director, UNFPA
March 31, 2003

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Commission, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good morning. It gives me great pleasure to address the opening of this 36th session of the Commission on Population and Development. Let me begin, Mr. Chairman, by congratulating you and the members of your Bureau on your election as officers of this year’s Commission. I would also like to express my appreciation to my colleague, Joseph Chamie, and the staff of the Population Division of the United Nations Secretariat for their hard work in organizing this meeting.

I would also like to commend the very important work that the Commission on Population and Development is doing. It continues to be a privilege for me to work closely with Member States through the Commission to help ensure the implementation of the Programme of Action of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). UNFPA and the Population Division will continue to work closely together, combining our comparative advantages, to help countries meet the range of population and development challenges at present and in the future.

Mr. Chairman, the special theme of this year's meeting -- Population, Education and Development -- is of immense importance to UNFPA. Ensuring that all children, especially girls, are enrolled in primary school is a key goal of the ICPD Programme of Action and is now at the forefront of the development agenda as one of the eight Millennium Development Goals.

Education is a fundamental human right and a key factor in sustainable development. Among the broad benefits of quality and gender-sensitive education are increased family incomes, later marriages, reduced infant and maternal mortality rates, and better-nourished and healthier children and families. Education ensures greater opportunities and life choices for women and men, better use of health information and services, and greater participation in decision-making and development.

Since the early 1970s, population and family life education have become a significant part of many school curricula, largely with the support of UNFPA. Since the 1994 Cairo Conference, population education content has placed more emphasis on health education, including reproductive health. However, efforts need to be sustained and increased, because there are still some 860 million non-literate adults, with over 113 million children not attending school, the majority of whom are girls.

In addressing gender disparities and designing appropriate education including reproductive health education, UNFPA and its partners, both within the United Nations system and in civil society, have over the years supported many initiatives. In Paraguay and Ecuador, for example, UNFPA has supported the integration of reproductive health services and sensitization activities within military training academies and military health systems. In Cameroon, a book of comic strips has been created with UNFPA support to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS prevention among young people. In Togo, teachers are integrating messages about family health into formal education. And in Sierra Leone, UNFPA and partners are training United Nations peacekeepers about HIV prevention and gender awareness.

ICPD

As we approach the mid-point of the 20-year ICPD Programme of Action, we have much to be proud of. Many countries have been able to translate the commitments they made in Cairo into policies and action programmes designed to transform the lives of their peoples, especially women. But much remains to be done.

The follow-up to the Millennium Summit is increasingly recognizing that the ICPD goal of universal access to quality reproductive health services by 2015 is essential to progress in achieving each of the Millennium Development Goals. As Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated last December in his statement to the Fifth Asian and Pacific Population Conference: "The Millennium Development Goals, particularly the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, cannot be achieved if questions of population and reproductive health are not squarely addressed. And this means stronger efforts to promote women's rights and greater investment in education and health, including reproductive health and family planning."

According to the Population Division’s recently released 2002 revision of World Population Prospects, global population will reach 8.9 billion persons in 2050, up from 6.3 billion today. This new estimate for 2050 is 0.4 billion persons lower than projected in the 2000 round. Some of the slowing of population growth is due to the effects of the continued ravages of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which is markedly increasing mortality levels in some countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. But an equal part of the lower growth rates is due to the success of population and family planning programmes coupled with the empowerment of women to enjoy reproductive health and reproductive rights.

Strengthening health services, including reproductive health, will both advance prevention of HIV/AIDS and ensure the realization of the right to informed and responsible choice on the number, timing and spacing of children.

It is important that we keep up efforts in these critical areas. There are nearly one billion young people today, who are entering their prime reproductive years, and they need information and services that will help them protect their health and well-being and enable them to make responsible and informed decisions and lead productive lives. UNFPA estimates that the demand for family planning alone will increase by 40 per cent by the year 2015.

Whether the world will add 2.6 billion people, as envisioned in the median projection, or 4.3 billion people, as projected at the higher end, will largely depend on the actions that are taken or not taken over the next decade. We must continue support for population and development programmes in line with the ICPD goals. Quality reproductive health programmes must be maintained and expanded to meet growing needs. This is absolutely critical in the fight against AIDS. These programmes should be combined with efforts to empower women and girls, through education and literacy classes and economic opportunities, and to increase male responsibility.

Mr. Chairman,
We need to make a pragmatic and constructive country-by-country analysis of achievements and constraints of population programmes. UNFPA is currently undertaking a field inquiry on national experiences, in both developing and developed countries. The inquiry will provide valuable information on lessons learned, which individual countries can use as part of their national reviews to assess their own achievements and identify specific challenges they face in implementing the ICPD Programme of Action.

Based on the information provided in the inquiry, UNFPA will prepare synthesis reports on national experiences in implementing the ICPD Programme of Action and the Key Actions agreed at the ICPD+5, in order to identify lessons learned and best practices. We hope that the exercise will stimulate other activities at the national level, while providing a common framework to assess progress at the national, regional and global levels. The lessons learned and exchanges of experiences at the regional level, which we are organizing with the United Nations regional commissions, will enable countries to identify the lessons learned in each region and how they can help one another through South-South cooperation.

We are also exploring other avenues to analyse national experiences and lessons learned in implementing the Programme of Action, and will report on these findings and other analyses in our State of World Population report for 2004.

UNFPA looks forward to the Commission on Population and Development’s 2004 review of aspects of ICPD implementation. It may be particularly timely to focus our collective attention on issues such as capacity building, partnerships, resource mobilization and the latest advances in demographic research.

Distinguished delegates,
Before I conclude this morning, I will like to reiterate that we cannot accomplish the ICPD goals without the financial means to do so. The ICPD has set financial targets for implementing the Programme of Action. And the Monterrey Consensus reaffirmed the need for financing for development. But the resources have not been as forthcoming as we had all hoped. In the Secretary-General's annual report on the Flow of financial resources for assisting in the implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, which UNFPA will present later this morning, you will note that both external assistance and domestic expenditures for population activities have declined since the last report. We sincerely hope that this is not the start of a new trend but merely a sign of tough economic times that will reverse as economies improve. Mobilizing the required resources for population and development is as important as ever, because if the Millennium Development Goals are to be achieved, the ICPD agenda must be fully implemented. Thank you.

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