UN Conference Addresses Lack of Access to Family Planning in Developing Countries
NEW YORK, June 30– Family planning experts from around the world warn that the lack of funding for family planning is stalling development efforts in poor countries, especially those facing large population growth.
UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, convened 30 leading family planning policy experts June 30-July 2 to review innovative programs that have succeeded in increasing access to contraceptives and other reproductive health services among poor and hard-to-reach people. It also considered the reasons why funding for such programs has stagnated since 1995, even as population pressures have continued to increase.
Worldwide, an estimated 200 million women would like to delay or prevent a pregnancy but are not using effective contraception. In the poorest countries, fewer than one in ten women are using such methods. Meanwhile, demand for contraceptives is expected to grow by 40 percent in the next 15 years.
The meeting, “Reducing Inequities: Ensuring Universal Access to Family Planning,” will issue a Call to Action, directed towards governments and funders and outlining the steps needed to achieve universal access to family planning.
UNFPA officials note that the populations of many African countries are expected to more than double within the next few decades, bringing greater poverty and inequity and declining health and environmental conditions, if current trends continue.
As part of the conference, there was an audio press conference on Tuesday, June 30. Three experts discussed the status of family planning in the developing world and its impact on population dynamics and inequality. They also presented results from innovative and successful programmes to increase access to family planning, explained how poverty and social status impact access, and shared the latest information on funding needed for global access to family planning.
Click here to read a UNFPA dispatch, "The Unfinished Agenda of Family Planning," from the conference.
UNFPA and the World Bank Hold Event to Celebrate 20th Anniversary of World Population Day Spotlights Importance of Investing in Women
WASHINGTON, June 30 – High-ranking leaders of the global drive for universal access to reproductive health care today launched the 20th annual observation of World Population Day, observed on July 11, with a joint call upon governments and donor agencies for greater investment in women.
The World Bank and UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund co-hosted a luncheon today with the theme “Responding to the Economic Crisis: Investing in Women is a Smart Choice.” UNFPA executive Director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid told today’s luncheon at the World Bank headquarters that women and children in developing countries are bearing the brunt of the current economic meltdown.
“As we celebrate World Population Day, I would like to call for far greater attention to the issue of population, which seems to have fallen off the radar screen. I do not think that any of the crises we are facing today—whether it is the food crisis, the water crisis, the financial crisis or the crisis of climate change, can be managed unless greater attention is paid to population issues, and stronger action is taken to implement the Programme of Action that was adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development,” she said.
“Now more than ever, in these times of global economic crisis, I call on decision-makers to increase resources for reproductive health, including family planning, so we can make greater progress for women and families,” she said. “There is no smarter investment, with such high economic and social returns, than investing in the health and rights of adolescent girls and women.”
Joy Phumaphi, vice president for human development at the World Bank and chair of the event, said, “The global economic downturn has taken a wrecking ball to growth and development in poor countries worldwide, and has become a development emergency for women because invariably they're the first to suffer when economic crises strike."
Other speakers included Susanna Moorehead, Exeuctive Director of the World Bank in the United Kingdom, Ngozi Okonjo-Iwaela, World Bank Managing Director and Margaret Pollack, Acting Director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Population in the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.
World Population Day observations began in 1989 with a declaration by the United Nations General Assembly. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement endorsing this year’s focus on women, noting that cost-cutting from the global financial crisis had affected everyone. “But our work for the women of the world must continue undiminished,” the statement said. “When you empower a woman, you empower a family. When you empower a woman, you change the world.”
Click here to read a join press release from UNFPA and the World Bank on the eve of the 20th anniversary of World Population Day.
Author Says Global War on Reproductive Rights Is Disaster for Development Discussion Will Be Held in DC and Webcast Live at www.wilsoncenter.org on Thursday, June 25 at 12pm EST.
WASHINGTON, June 22 – Reproductive health and rights have become the focal point of the global culture wars, according to Michelle Goldberg, author of The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and The Future of the World.
“There is one thing that unites cultural conservatives throughout the world, a critique that joins Protestant fundamentalism, Islamists, Hindu Nationalists, ultra-Orthodox Jews, and ultramontane Catholics,” Goldberg writes. “All view women’s equality and self-possession as unnatural, a violation of the established order. Yet in one society after another, we can see the absence of women’s rights creating existential dangers.”
Goldberg asserts that granting reproductive rights to women worldwide can help achieve gender equality, control rapid population growth, curb sex ratio imbalances, decrease poverty, limit the spread of HIV/AIDS and slow environmental degradation.
On Thursday, June 25 at 12 p.m., Goldberg will discuss The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, 5th Floor Conference Room). The discussion will also feature Carol Peasley, President and CEO, Centre for Development and Population
Activities (CEDPA).
To RSVP for the event, email ecsp@wilsoncenter.org with your name and affiliation. The discussion will also be webcast live at www.wilsoncenter.org.
Goldberg, a former senior writer for Salon.com who is now a senior correspondent for the American Prospect, explores population issues on four continents: the global gag rule, abortion, religious fundamentalism and female circumcision. Her book examines the history of American foreign policy on birth control and family planning, noting that the global family planning infrastructure was created by Republicans during the Cold War as a way to curb communism. She traces the historic shift in global family planning programs after 1994 to feminists who believed in putting women’s rights first and opposed coercive population control.
In separate remarks, Goldberg said "The Obama administration has already brought about crucial improvements in American policy towards women's rights and reproductive health globally. Whereas under Bush the United States was part of an axis of fundamentalists, the country will now once again be a major force for progress. It turns out that American elections have an even greater impact on women's lives worldwide than they do here at home. But that doesn't mean these issues are going away -- there are still powerful forces arrayed against women's freedom all over the world."
In an interview with National Public Radio, Goldberg highlighted the work of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. “It's much more involved in a kind of global program of women's empowerment,” she said, “so it fights for women's education, against fistula, against female genital mutilation or what some people call female circumcision. It's involved in this much broader kind of program of women's health and rights.”
Goldberg noted high maternal mortality rates in Africa – one in every 26 women will die of pregnancy-related complications – and its implications. “So you can't solve maternal mortality by legalizing abortion and providing safe abortions, but you also can't cut maternal mortality without doing that,” she told NPR. “If you have unsafe abortion responsible for a third of maternal deaths, it's one of the easiest ways that you can start to bring down some of these scandalously high numbers.”
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, in his April 12 blog, agreed with Goldberg on the significance of women’s rights and highlighted a significant point in the book: “Women’s rights must not be treated as trivial adjuncts to great questions of war and peace, poverty and development. What’s at stake are not lifestyles but lives.”
Michelle Goldberg is also the author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.
Carol Peasley is the president and CEO of the Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA). Previously, she served for more than
30 years with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), achieving the rank of Career Minister. She held senior positions in
Washington and overseas, including as USAID Mission Director in both Malawi and the Russian Federation, and as counselor to the Agency and
senior deputy assistant administrator for Africa in Washington. She has served on the board of ShoreBank International and Opportunities
Industrialization Centers International, and worked as a senior advisor at the Financial Services Volunteer Corps.
A Step Forward for U.S. International Family Planning Assistance Washington DC, June 17 – Record U.S. appropriations for family planning and reproductive health care assistance overseas took a first crucial step toward enactment today, winning approval from the key House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations.
U.S. Representative Nita Lowey (D-NY) said in her opening statement, "Voluntary family planning services for families in the developing world is also a priority of this committee."
The proposed $658 million bilateral and multilateral funding for fiscal 2010, if finally enacted, would be 19 percent higher than the 2009 appropriation and 40 percent above the 2008 figure of $464.2 million. “Any way you measure it, it’s a major increase,” said Craig Lasher of Population Action International, “the largest amount ever for these programs.”
The figure includes $60 million for UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, restricting its use to programs outside China, in a nod to conservatives’ criticisms of the agency. The full Appropriations Committee is scheduled to consider the bill next week, with Senate action likely in late July.
Economic Crisis is Threat and Incentive for Women’s Health Care NEW YORK, June 16 – Rising global economic pressure threatens the health of women and children most, even as it sparks new approaches to financing better care, according to a United Nations study released yesterday.
The report, published by the Global Campaign for the Health Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on behalf of the Network of Global Leaders, says goals relating to child and maternal health are the most “elusive” of the eight MDGs and the least likely to be achieved by their 2015 target date.
“Efforts to reduce maternal and newborn deaths through the MDGs have so far failed miserably,” said Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store of Norway, which spearheads the Network of Global Leaders. “We all need to invest more, work more closely together and secure systems that must deliver on our commitments.”
The study calls for increasing global health spending by $36 billion to $45 billion by 2015, funded through innovative measures such as levies on airline tickets, currency transfers and tobacco, as well as front-loaded investments and private donations. Policy recommendations include streamlining and coordinating aid operations, removing access barriers and increasing accountability for results.
One proposal, providing free maternal health care or paying poor women to receive it, is working in India, according to Norway’s UN Ambassador Morten Wetland. He told National Public Radio that the pilot program pays pregnant women $15 to $20 to come to a clinic to give birth.
“It matters so much for these mothers because they can stand up against those who are more traditional in their village or in their family who believe they should do it the way they always have done it,” at home, Wetland said. The program offering greater maternal health care has slashed maternal deaths in the area, he said, and is likely to be expanded to 49 more countries with new U.S. and U.N. funding.
The Group of Eight major industrial powers is expected to take up the funding need at a summit meeting in Italy July 8-10.
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