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Introduction
On 13 September 1994 in Cairo, after nine days of intense
debate, the International Conference on Population and
Development (ICPD) adopted a wide-ranging 20-year
action plan that delegates and commentators hailed
as opening a “new era in population”.
Underpinned by a commitment to human rights
and gender equality, the Cairo agreement called on
countries to ensure reproductive health and rights
for all as a critical contribution to sustainable development
and the fight against poverty, which the
ICPD saw as inseparable from addressing population
concerns.
“You have crafted a Programme of Action for the
next 20 years, which starts from the reality of the
world we live in, and shows us a path to a better
reality,” Dr. Nafis Sadik, UNFPA Executive Director
and Secretary-General of the conference, told delegates
at the closing session. “The Programme contains
highly specific goals and recommendations in the
mutually reinforcing areas of infant and maternal
mortality, education, and reproductive health and
family planning, but its effect will be far widerranging
than that. This Programme of Action has
the potential to the change the world.”
Ten years into the new era, it is time to take stock:
- The ICPD Programme of Action provides a blueprint
for actions in population and reproductive
health that countries agree are essential to realizing
global development goals including ending
extreme poverty and hunger, empowering women,
reducing maternal mortality, preserving the environment
and stemming the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In
recent regional and global meetings and in practice,
governments have strongly reaffirmed their
commitment, based on experience, to utilize the Programme of Action as an indispensable strategy
for improving people’s well-being and ensuring
human rights.
- Many developing countries have made great
strides in putting the ICPD’s recommendations
into action, with a significant impact. Countries
are working to integrate population factors with
development plans, improve the quality and reach
of reproductive health programmes, promote
women’s rights, meet the needs of young people and
those in emergency situations, and strengthen HIV
prevention efforts. Access to family planning continues
to grow; 60 per cent of married couples in
developing countries now use modern methods of
contraception, compared to 10-15 per cent in 1960.
- Inadequate resources and persistent gaps in
serving the poorest populations are impeding
progress, however, in meeting ongoing challenges
including the continued spread of HIV/AIDS, especially
among the young, unmet need for family
planning, and high fertility and maternal mortality
in the least-developed countries. Donors need to
meet the commitments made in Cairo and give
due priority to reproductive health in anti-poverty
development assistance plans, and programmes
must be scaled up and extended to realize the ICPD’s
goal of comprehensive reproductive health care for
all by 2015.
As its name implied, the ICPD was based on the premise
that population size, growth and distribution are
closely linked to prospects for economic and social
development, and that actions in one area reinforce
actions in the other.
This premise had won increasing acceptance in
the two decades since the first World Population
Conference in 1974, as population grew rapidly in
developing regions and as more and more countries
gained experience with family planning programmes.
By 1994, most developing countries saw a need to
address population concerns in order to promote
economic growth and improve people’s well-being.
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| A WIDE MANDATE |
The 1994 Conference was explicitly
given a broader mandate on
development issues than previous
population conferences, reflecting the
growing awareness that population,
poverty, patterns of production and
consumption and the environment are
so closely interconnected that none of
them can be considered in isolation. |
| —ICPD Programme of Action, para. 1.5 |
A NEW APPROACH. But the Cairo conference radically
changed the international community’s approach to
the interlinked challenges of population and development,
putting human beings and
human rights, rather than
population numbers and
growth rates, at the centre
of the equation.
At the heart of this paradigm
shift was the move away
from a perception of population
as essentially a macro-economic
variable for planning and policy,
to a rights-based approach in
which the well-being of individuals
is key. The ICPD
Programme of Action called
for policies and programmes to
take an integrated approach—
linking population action to
human development, women’s empowerment, gender
equality, and the needs and rights of individuals,
including young people.
The ICPD Programme of Action recognized that
investing in people, in broadening their opportunities
and enabling them to realize their potential as human
beings, is the key to sustained economic growth and
sustainable development, as well as to population
levels that are in balance with the environment
and available resources.
As part of this shift, the ICPD grounded family
planning, once the main focus of population policies
and programmes, within a broader framework of
reproductive health and rights, including family
planning and sexual health. It recognized reproductive
health as a human right for all people throughout their life cycle, and urged countries to strive for
universal access to comprehensive reproductive
health services by 2015 (see Chapter 6).
INDIVIDUAL CHOICE PROMOTES PROSPERITY. The
ICPD consensus recognized that enabling couples and
individuals to freely determine the number, timing
and spacing of their children would speed progress
towards smaller families and slower population
growth, contributing to economic growth and reducing
poverty, at both the household and macro levels. Conversely, it understood that
not addressing needs and major
gaps in reproductive health
services would help perpetuate
high fertility, high maternal
mortality and rapid population
growth, undermining poverty
reduction prospects (see
Chapter 2).
WOMEN’S RIGHTS. Empowering
women was recognized as an
important end in itself, as well
as a key to improving the quality
of life of everyone. Without
the full and equal participation
of women, there can be no sustainable
human development.
The Programme of Action stressed the importance of reproductive rights to
women’s autonomy, as a complement to education,
economic empowerment and political participation
(see Chapter 5).
Important breakthroughs were made in facing up
to urgent but sensitive challenges including adolescents’
sexual health, HIV/AIDS and unsafe abortion.
Unprecedented attention was given to underserved
groups, including the rural poor, indigenous peoples,
urban slum dwellers, and refugees and internally
displaced people.
PARTICIPATION AND PARTNERSHIP. The Cairo agreement
also envisioned a participatory and accountable
development process, actively involving beneficiaries
to ensure that programmes and policy goals are linked with personal realities, and to building broad
partnerships between governments, international
organizations and civil society.
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