Parliamentarians strive to commit the United Nations to establish a ninth Millennium Development Goal

Tenth Anniversary of 1994 Cairo Agreement Begins Countdown to 2015 to Reach Goals on HIV/AIDS, Reproductive Health, Environment

Click here to read Sen. John Kerry's Statement in Support of the Rights of Women and Families Around the World

Click here to read the International Parliamentarians’ Oct 18 Statement

Click here to read the World Leaders Statement signed by more than 250 global leaders in all fields

Click here to read U.S. Statement on 10th Anniversary of the Cairo Consensus on Population and Development

Audio News Briefing:

The Audio News Briefing on Oct. 19 featured the following speakers: US Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (NY- 14) Thoraya Obaid, UNFPA Chris McCafferty, UK Labor Member of Parliament Click here for speakers' bios

Strasbourg, France, 20 October 2004 -- Parliamentarians from around the world today called for greater action to defend sexual and reproductive rights of all individuals. Over 130 parliamentarians from 90 countries committed themselves to a set of actions that would help realize the ICPD Programme of Action, agreed upon ten years ago by the governments of the world in Cairo, with the goal of bringing about sexual and reproductive rights and health for all by 2015. According to the Parliamentarians, reproductive rights and health are at the heart of the development agenda and without realizing the ICPD goals, the Millennium Development Goals will remain an empty promise.

The missing MDG: Universal access to reproductive health services by 2015 is for millions of women and men simply a matter of life and death.

“For many women in developing countries, pregnancy is still a death penalty” said Agnes van Ardenne, the Dutch Minister for Development Cooperation, one of the 6 ministers who joined the Conference.

She also announced, that during the Dutch presidency of the EU, Europe intends to fill the (financial) gap of 75 million dollars, needed for reproductive health commodities in 2004.

Maternal mortality, 530.000 women dying every year from the complications of pregnancy and childbirth, 98% of them in developing countries, cannot be solved without ensuring universal access to reproductive health services. The International Parliamentarians Conference on the Implementation of the ICPD therefore decided that the goals agreed upon in Cairo do classify as a ninth Millennium Development Goal and also decided to use their individual and collective influence to help realize the acceptance of the ninth MDG.

Other commitments the Parliamentarians made in the Strasbourg Declaration include financial commitments: Parliamentarians will promote that 0.7% of GNP goes to ODA, and that 10% of the ODA goes to population and reproductive health programs.

They also expressed the need for mobilizing an additional 150 million dollar a year to fund the unmet needs in commodities for UNFPA and IPPF supported programs.

The Kenyan Minister of Health, Kaluki Ngilu, addressed financial issues by saying: “Comparing expenditures in defense with those in health, one almost senses that there is some conspiracy against poor people. The greatest defense my fellow African women need is access to affordable reproductive health services.”

The Strasbourg Declaration encourages the integration of HIV/AIDS and reproductive health services and promotes coordinated, coherent, and scaled up responses to the ongoing pandemic.

The Parliamentarians committed themselves to promote and protect the rights of adolescents, including their right to reproductive health information and services, strictly enforce laws on age at marriage and seek to eliminate disparities in how boys and girls are treated and valued within families and by society.

During the two-day conference in Strasbourg a lot of speakers brought up the issue of unsafe abortion and the 60.000 women who are dying every year from the consequences of it.

In the Strasbourg Declaration it reads: Give high priority to efforts to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity and unsafe abortion in line with WHO’s Safe Abortion: Technical and Policy Guidance for Health Systems (2003), both as a public health issue and as a sexual and reproductive rights concern.

Finally, the IPCI decided to systematically and actively monitor the progress in fulfilling the commitments they made. They further pledged to report regularly on this progress through parliamentary groups and to meet in two years to assess the results.

The conference was hosted by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and organized by the Inter-European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development (IEPFPD) and UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. Other parliamentary groups supporting the conference include: the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD), the Forum of African and Arab Parliamentarians on Population and Development (FAAPPD), the Inter-American Parliamentary Group on Population and Development (IAPG) and the Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA).

STRASBOURG, France, 18 October – A global Parliamentarians’ Conference on the Implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action began today in Strasbourg, France. Parliamentarians and government ministers from 90 countries will assess progress in promoting universal access to reproductive health care and reducing maternal death by 2015. The two-day conference is hosted by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and organized by the Inter-European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development (IEPFPD) and UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund.

“Parliamentarians control the purse-strings,” said Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, in a video news release available for broadcasters. “They can allocate resources for programmes to fight poverty and to devote attention to women. They also have legislative power, and can legislate to ensure that certain standards are met.”

The Programme of Action, adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), is a bold 20-year plan to slow population growth and increase economic growth by investing in reproductive health services, education and women’s rights. This year marks the halfway point in that plan and parliamentarians have a crucial role to play in its success over the next decade. The global parliamentarians’ conference follows other commemorations of the 10th anniversary of ICPD, including: the global round table of non-governmental organizations ‘Countdown 2015’, the United Nations General Assembly meeting on 14 October and a series of regional conferences and public events.

“Life or death is a political decision and it is up to parliamentarians to put into place laws and policies and budgets that save lives by increasing access to education and reproductive health services for all,” said Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, UNFPA Executive Director. “These services fight ignorance and poverty. They prevent unnecessary deaths of millions of mothers and babies. Clearly, these are some of the best investments governments can make.”

Discussions in Strasbourg will focus on how lawmakers can help mobilize urgently needed funds and promote national legislation and policies on population and reproductive health. Funding shortfalls are undermining efforts to increase voluntary family planning services, expand safe motherhood interventions and scale up HIV/AIDS prevention efforts.

“We should always remember that lowering mortality rates means saving more lives, that access for everyone to adequate health care means boosting their health and ability to work and earn their living; that alleviating poverty means defending human dignity and that empowering women means empowering society as a whole,” stressed the Rt. Hon. Terry Davis, Secretary- General of the Council of Europe.

Over the next decade, the cost of providing quality contraceptive commodities is projected to rise from $810 million to $1.8 billion. It has been calculated that each $1 million of commodities could prevent 800 maternal deaths, 150,000 abortions or 360,000 unwanted pregnancies.

“Today, people in many countries know about modern contraceptives, want to use them and know how, but have no access to them,” said Hon. Ruth Genner, President of IEPFPD and a Member of Parliament in Switzerland. Ms. Genner noted that, in some sub-Saharan African countries, an adult man has access to only one condom per year and in some Eastern European countries, a monthly supply of birth control pills costs 20 to 30 per cent of a monthly wage, while an abortion costs only one-tenth that much. “How can we be surprised at the high rates of HIV infection in Africa, or at the dependence on abortion in Eastern Europe?” she asked.

Parliamentarians are expected to adopt a strong set of commitments in Strasbourg outlining concrete actions countries should take over the next 10 years.

Other parliamentary groups supporting the conference include: the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development, the Forum of African and Arab Parliamentarians on Population and Development, the Inter-American Parliamentary Group on Population and Development and the Parliamentarians for Global Action.

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