Summary of the ICPD Programme of Action

"Greater investments in health and education services for all people, in particular women, to enable the full and equal participation of women in civil, cultural, economic, political and social life are essential to achieving the objectives of the Programme of Action."

-- Preamble, Para. 2, Key Actions for the Further Implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, adopted by the twenty-first special session of the General Assembly, New York, 1999.

The international community has committed itself to an ambitious goal: cutting in half the number of people living in absolute poverty by 2015. To do this, world leaders have adopted specific targets for life expectancy, education, housing, gender equality, openness of trade, and environmental protection.

But success in achieving these goals depends upon several conditions:

• The first condition rests on respect for national sovereignty: each country will assess its own needs.

• The second condition is that all of the Millennium Development Goals are interrelated and strategic efforts must be made to achieve all of the targets at the same time.

• The third condition is that these goals remain the starting point, and not the final steps, for eradicating poverty. Efforts in other areas not mentioned in the list of goals should be made. These include debt relief and changes in trade regimes and investment arrangements as well as development assistance.

Practical efforts to eradicate poverty rest directly upon the enforcement of basic human rights. These rights are the starting point from which goals were set in the ICPD Programme of Action and the follow-up goals that came out of the ICPD+5 conference in 1999.

Poverty cannot and will not be eradicated without achieving ICPD goals. Universal access to education and reproductive health care are crucial steps that can help to eradicate poverty. Meeting these ICPD goals will pave a straight road directly toward reaching the Millennium Development Goals.

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Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• To halve the number of people living on less than $1 a day and the number of people living in hunger, universal access to reproductive health care for men and women is imperative.
  

• The ICPD Programme of Action and ICPD+5 benchmarks aim for universal access to voluntary reproductive health services, including family planning. Access to these services will give their users fundamental choices that will change the repetitive cycle of poverty. With access to family planning, women and men can decide if, when and how many children they want.
  

• Lower fertility results in slower population growth and opens a "demographic window"of opportunity for economic growth and poverty reduction, as the ratio of dependants to working-age people declines.
  

• Large families dilute the assets of poorer households, and unwanted births deepen household poverty. Smaller families allow more investment in each child's education and health.

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Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education

• To achieve universal primary education, the gender gap must be closed.

• The ICPD Programme of Action's goal of basic education for all boys and girls by 2015 can be supported through the empowerment of women, training teachers to be gender sensitive, promoting the value of educating girls, postponing early marriage and childbearing, allowing pregnant teens to continue studying, providing scholarships, providing universal access to reproductive health, and lowering fertility, morbidity and mortality rates.

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Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

• Ensuring gender equity and equality, and the empowerment of women depends in part on overcoming cultural, social and economic constraints that limit women's access to education, as well as providing universal access to reproductive health services that allow them to control their fertility.

• Combating violence against women, and removing social and family barriers to women's wider social participation are essential.

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Goal 4: Reduce child mortality

• A healthy mother is the first step towards a healthy child. Infant and child mortality are highest for the youngest mothers and after closely spaced births. High fertility reduces the provision of health care to children.

• Unwanted children are more likely to die than wanted ones. Providing universal access to reproductive health care will help to prevent unwanted pregnancy.

• The death of a mother increases the risk that her children will die.

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Goal 5: Improve maternal health

• The highest proportion of women's ill health burden is related to their reproductive role. Universal access to reproductive health care--including family planning; care in pregnancy, during and after childbirth; and emergency obstetric care--would reduce unwanted pregnancy, unsafe abortion and maternal death, saving women's lives and the lives of their children.

• Promotion of delayed marriage reduces the risks associated with too-early childbearing. Enabling women to have fewer pregnancies reduces the lifetime risk of maternal death and illness.

• Women's empowerment will enable women to address the social conditions that endanger their health and lives.

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Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases

• Universal access to reproductive health care is critically important in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

• The ICPD notes that better information on HIV/AIDS can prevent transmission of HIV and other STIs.

• Half of new HIV infections are among young people. Preventing infection means enabling young people to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases. This includes teaching abstinence outside marriage, fidelity within it and responsible behaviour at all times, including the responsible use of condoms.

• Poor countries need an adequate supply of reproductive health commodities, including male and female condoms, and strengthened systems for their supply and distribution.

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Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

• Balancing resource use and ecological requirements will depend critically on population growth, location and movements, on patterns of resource consumption, and management of waste.

• The ICPD acknowledges that rapid growth of poor rural populations puts enormous stress on local environments. Poor people need better education and health services, including universal access to reproductive health care and family planning, to improve their health and well-being.

• Appropriate policies will reduce urban migration and promote sustainable rural population growth.

• The sustainable improvement of the lives of slum and shanty dwellers will depend on policies to address high urban growth rates, which result from both natural increase and migration.

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Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

• Population and reproductive health programmes have lagged in the least-developed countries, especially those with high levels of mortality and unwanted fertility. These countries will benefit most from higher international assistance and debt forgiveness, as well as domestic resources for health and education. They need universal access to reproductive health care coupled with affordable prices for essential drugs for treating HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, and a secure supply of contraceptives and other reproductive health commodities.

• The ICPD called on international donors to provide one third of the support needed for reproductive health programmes in developing countries worldwide: $5.7 billion (of the $17 billion total requirement) in 2000, rising to $7.2 billion by 2015. Current international support is less than half of this required level.

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