The Cairo agenda
p. 27 · Read in the full issue
BY the time you are reading this article, the International Conference on Popu lation and Development (ICPD) would be over, but the work would only be starting. Each country, including the 13 Pacific island countries represented at the meeting, would now have a clear picture of what it needs to do about population and development and how to marry the two.
The Cairo conference was the culmi nation of three years of tough nego tiations which ended in Prep Com 111 in New York in April this year. There, negotiators from around the world including the donor community had agreed to about 80 percent of the text of the Programme of Action. The rest was finalised in Cairo.
The document is the blueprint for tackling the population and develop ment issues well into the 21st century and for many island countries in the
Pacific it means having to make balanced decisions in allocating scarce resources.
Delegates from 13 Forum Island Countries (FICs) the Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Samoa, along with Palau attended. The South Pacific Forum Secretariat and the South Pacific Commission (SPC) also attended to jointly co ordinate the Pacific’s participation.
There was no doubt that the Pacific region which had received notoriety in the UN system for its “excellent” input during the preparatory talks (PreCom II & III) in New York, would have come out of this meeting satisfied about its effort. The Pacific effort was described by an ICPD Secretariat advisor as “impressive”. He added, “In an organisation (such as the UN) which cares little about little people, to gain prominence and notoriety is something. Your effort has been greatly admired by everyone,” the advisor said.
With a population of 15 million, Cairo had the capacity to accommodate this “invasion” of thousands of diplomats, officials and representatives of non-governmentall organis ations, but in reality, overall arrangements were lacking. For instance, no Pacific country was assigned a permanent liaison officer to deal with the numerous problems, let alone the language barrier.
Senior ministers from the South Pacific were furious that on checking in at Nile Boats, where they were booked for accommodation, the management demanded payment before rooms were allocated. What angered many was the fact that most had prepaid for their accommodation.
Security was also tight. Up to 45,000 armed police with shoot-to-kill orders provided security around the clock for some 25 delegates who attended the nine-day conference.
They were joined on the eve of day one of the conference by the Egyptian presidential guard an elite protection squad which took over security at the Cairo International Conference Centre (CICC), the venue for the conference, in preparation for the official opening by Egypt’s President, Hosni Mubarak. As part of the security clampdown, sharp shooters took up positions atop a cluster of tall residential buildings directly opposite CICC.
Threats by hardliners opposed to some of the issues at the conference, such as contraception and abortion, had prompted the Egyptian gov ernment to mobilise its security machine to deal with any attempts
to disrupt the proceedings.
For the Pacific, much of the work had already been done at Prep Com II & 111 in New York and so they were in Cairo merely to join others in a symbolic gesture to give the Programme of Action a global
blessing.
Although its passage was inevi table, the Vatican was exerting pressure to water down the lan guage used in the document. The Vatican’s position was that no reference should be made to abortion or contraception and other related issues in the Pro gramme of Action as these are
contrary to the Church’s teaching on family planning methods.
Opposition to the Vatican’s stand was echoed in an open letter addressed to the Pope. The one-and-half page advertisement was published in Earth Times on the day the conference opened. It was paid for by thousands of Catholics from all over the world who had decided to take a stand on the issue of contraception.
The letter said, “As faithful Catholics who share with you a responsibility for the life of our church, we speak to you directly because we are deeply distressed by the Vatican’s continuing opposition to contraception...Because of the human pain caused by Vatican opposition to contraception, because such opposition severly worsens our global crisis of population and resources and because the majority of good Catholics — after long and prayerful reflection — have rejected it, we say to you simply — on the issue of contraception, you are wrong.”
The open letter to Pope John II also challenged the Pontiff to join like-minded Catholics in serious new dialogue and called on world leaders and the UN to embrace a worldwide goal to ensure contraceptive family planning is available to every man and woman by the end of the century.
One area of special interest to the Pacific is the resources needed to implement many of the issues outlined and agreed to in the Programme of Action. Estimates vary, but according to one, the Action Programme would cost US$4 billion to implement in the first year. By the year 2000, this would have risen to US$17 billion.
Already dogged by donor fatigue, donor countries and agencies are not as forthcoming in their commitment as they were two decades ago. They have been called on to provide 0.7 percent of the Gross National Product (GDP) to fund the Programme of Action. At the same time donors have insisted that recipient countries channel 20 pecent of their interna tional aid assistance to finance the social sector including family planning programmes.
Many island countries disagreed with this because such an arrangement could tie their hands in resource distribution, and other areas of national priority could suffer as a result. □