Cairo+5 Prepcom Stalls in New York

Developing Nations Take Stand on Reproductive Health

The five year review of the Cairo Conference on Population and Development chugs slowly and painfully toward an uncertain conclusion. Convened to review the implementation of the 1994 Cairo Program of Action, this process has been bogged down repeatedly in a tug-of-war between the developing world’s wishes for increased funding for development, and the developed world’s insistence on advanced notions of “reproductive rights.”

This review process began more than a year ago with a series of “expert” and “technical” meetings sponsored by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the main UN sponsor of population control and women’s rights. Re-written almost exclusively in terms of control over fertility through unlimited access to any means of prevention or termination of pregnancy, “women’s rights” and the crusade to promote them have shored up the population control agenda with the facade of rights discourse, and collapsed all UNFPA programs in the developing world into simply one kind: fertility reduction.

These “expert” and “technical” meetings led to a series of preparatory committee meetings in the Hague and New York that were meant to write a new document that would bind governments to new concepts of women’s rights and to increased funding for population control. The end result of these meetings will be a Special Session of the UN General Assembly on Population and Development that will meet from June 30 to July 2.

It has been clear from the very start that the UNFPA wants two things: from the developing world they want documentary promises of further domestic commitments to advancing the UNFPA’s notion of women’s reproductive rights; from the developed world they want billions more in spending to support this agenda. These two wishes are now at loggerheads.

At Cairo in 1994, the developing world was for the most part willing to accept “reproductive rights” language in the document. Even though this liberal western concept challenged long-held traditional beliefs and practices in their own countries, developing world leaders were willing to take their chances in exchange for a huge influx of cash. The liberal western states promised upwards of $17 billion by the year 2000 for assistance in population and development programs. As only a third of this has materialized, the developing world feels somewhat taken in the deal. So in this current process they have dug in their heels on a whole host of reproductive health issues.

During what was intended to be the final preparatory committee meeting at UN headquarters in March, the Group of 77 (G-77, the 133 nation negotiating bloc of the developing world) grew angry at what they considered aggressive and ideological positions taken by the rich nations. For instance, the west is very concerned with the enormous cohort of developing world adolescents, said to be the largest in history at 1 billion. The document drafters included a lengthy section promoting adolescent sexual and reproductive rights. A move by the G-77 for “parental rights” was rebuffed by the UN and the European Union (EU). At one point the EU negotiator said that parents have “enough rights already.”

The rich nations also tried to introduce the new term “emergency contraception” into the document. The G-77 correctly saw the term as an attempt by the rich nations to get around the Cairo prohibition of using abortion as a method of family planning, and would not allow it in the document. Things grew so contentious at this final prepcom that the meeting ended on March 30 without a final document, which for the time being is a major black-eye to UNFPA and to its executive director, Dr. Nafis Sadik of Pakistan.

An increasingly vocal complaint from the G-77 was that this conference, ostensibly about population and development, focused almost completely on “reproductive health.” During the debate in the most recent round of meetings, it was pointed out that the draft document mentioned “reproductive health” 57 times while mentioning “basic health” only three times. At one point the G-77 tried to shift the focus toward development but were rebuffed by the western states. The G-77 also attempted to introduce mention of malaria into the document (a major health concern in the poor nations). The West relented only after a vociferous debate that lasted more than two hours.

So far the donor nations have refused to promise any more money. A document without financial commitments would be looked upon as a failure on the part of the UNFPA. Not only have the donor nations not lived up to supposed promises they made in 1994, they are refusing to make any more in this round.

After the collapse of the final prepcom in March, a special three-day set of “informals” convened at UN headquarters on May 5, 6 and 7. Even though Member States met until past midnight each night, no real agreements were reached. In fact, both sides seemed to hunker down even more. The US and the EU will not even consider increased funding, and the G-77 is holding firm against new ideas in reproductive rights.

The battle continues at a four-day “inter-sessional” immediately prior to the Special Session of the General Assembly at the end of June. It is uncertain whether any agreements will be reached at that time.

Austin Ruse is the Director of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute.

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