For Immediate Release:	March 3, 2004
For More Information:	Jennifer Hahn, Countdown 2015, LONDON: 07-79-537-6188; US: 914-833-7913
Sponsor Organization:	International Consensus on Population and Development
Experts Report from Latin America & Caribbean Committee on Population & Development: Ten Years After International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD)
March 1 -- Experts on women’s health, education and rights will convene in Santiago, Chile March 9-11 to evaluate Latin American and Caribbean progress on achieving the historic global health plan adopted in Cairo by 179 countries in 1994. Working against severe funding shortfalls and political pressure from the Vatican and the Bush administration’s global gag rule, countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are struggling to realize their commitments to improving women’s health made as part of the 1994 global consensus. Restrictive policies and significant unmet needs for contraception have created some of the highest rates of unplanned pregnancies in the world. As large numbers of youth enter their reproductive years, contraceptive supplies and condoms are increasingly scarce, even as more people depend on them to prevent pregnancy and control disease. As a result, Latin American and Caribbean women are facing increased health risks, including: • 23,000 Latin American and Caribbean women die each year from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. • More than 1 billion condoms are desperately needed to prevent HIV and other sexually-transmitted infections in Latin America and the Caribbean each year, but current funding levels meet less than 10 percent of this need. • Lack of education threatens women’s ability to control their fertility. In Brazil, for instance, illiterate women have an average of 6.5 children, whereas those with secondary education have 2.5 children. These challenges require the commitment of the world leaders who pledged a decade ago to devote significant resources to improve health and rights in the region. Without this commitment, nations worldwide risk undermining the progress that has already been made in achieving the ICPD’s goals. Ten years ago, the United States was a leader in promoting international family planning and a major force in achieving the ICPD consensus. Now the ICPD agenda is under serious threat: first by lagging contributions from donor nations, including the United States, and now by Bush administration efforts to reopen the Programme of Action for renegotiation of terms and findings. For example, U.S. efforts to remove all mention of “reproductive rights” from review documents were defeated at an Asian regional population policy conference in Bangkok (December 2002). The World Health Organization executive board adopted a resolution at U.S. behest on family health (January 2004) that removed references to unsafe abortion as a health problem, inserted calls for instruction in sexual abstinence, added references to faith-based organizations, and deleted sections on promoting healthy sexuality among adolescents. This represents a 180-degree shift in U.S. policy from one of support for and engagement in women’s concerns worldwide to one of opposition. Health advocates are anxious to see how the gathering in Chile will be impacted.