U.N. Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)
The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992, established a lengthy list of interlocked priorities in a document titled “Agenda 2l.” The Rio Declaration was presented as a legally non-binding, but nevertheless authoritative “Statement of Principles” addressing “demographic dynamics, health, changing consumption patterns, sustainable living and poverty.”
Priority actions related to this agenda focused on change related to poverty, consumption patterns and population and health. The actions were linked to “driving forces, poverty and consumption, environmental effects and human welfare.”
The essential means to achieve the goals of the agenda were described as “financial resources, international and domestic economies, national capacity building, the integration of environmental and development policies, role-strengthening of major groups, international institutions and regional institutions, international legal instruments, and information for decision-making.” These means were also to be used to affect the action agenda of “driving forces, production and consumption, environmental effects and human welfare.”
The driving forces behind production, consumption, environmental effects and human welfare were enumerated as: “value systems and lifestyles, population (urban and rural), socio-economic systems and knowledge” (The Global Partnership for Environment and Development, United Nations, New York, 1993).
U.N. World Conference on Human Rights
The United Nations Conference on Human Rights was held in Vienna, June 1993. The Vienna Declaration states: “All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis. While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural, religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of the States, regardless of their political, economic, and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms” (Para. 5).
“The World Conference on Human Rights urges the eradication of all forms of discrimination against women, both hidden and overt. The United Nations should encourage the goal of universal ratification by all States of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) by the year 2000 .… Inter alia, CEDAW should continue its review of reservations to the Conventional. States are urged to withdraw reservations that are contrary to the object and purpose of the Convention…” (Para. 39).
U.N. International Conference and Population and Development (ICPD)
The goals of the ICPD Cairo meeting, September 1994, related primarily to the empowerment of women for sexual and reproduction-related activities. The organizing agency for the non-governmental organizations in the United States was Zero Population Growth (ZPG).
The principles of the document of the International Conference on Population and Development refer to human rights, sustainable development, gender equality and empowerment of women, population policies, human well-being and quality of life, the eradication of poverty, the right to physical and mental health, family in its various forms, education, children’s rights, rights of migrants and indigenous peoples and sustainable development in the context of social progress.
In spite of broad references within the principles, the critical issues in Cairo were abortion, adolescent reproductive health care, the redefinition of the family and the reunification of refugee families.
References to abortion were buried in the language of previous documents; these included definitions of fertility regulation, sexual and reproductive health and safe motherhood. Direct reference to abortion asked governments to review their laws on abortion and provide medical care to women who decided to terminate their pregnancies. The issue was partially resolved with previous language which stated that “abortion should in no case be promoted as a method of family planning.”
The means to carry out the program will again be resource mobilization with the support of governments, the private sector, non-governmental organizations and donors. A $17 billion amount was set as the funding needed by the year 2000; shadowed by suggestions of progressive expenditures amounting to $22 billion by 2015.
Population Action International, an NGO which is notably influential in the current U.S. presidential administration, estimates that the investment needed for social programs which reinforce the desire for smaller families such as girl’s education will be needed to complement population control programs. They project the need for $75 billion a year for birth control costs, health care and primary education (Population Action International press packet).
The driving forces behind many of the recommendations in the draft document were motivated by women’s non-governmental organizations under the leadership of former U.S. congresswoman Bella Abzug and the International Women’s Health Coalition led by the Population Council’s Joan Dunlop (see “The Venus FlyTrap, PRI Review, vol. 4, no. 5, 1994).
The U.N. World Summit on Social Development (WSSD)
The focus of the World Summit on Social development in 6–12 March 1995 in Copenhagen, is intended to be “the eradication of poverty, appropriate population policies, the elimination of wasteful patterns of consumption, a supportive and open international economic system and the participation of all concerned citizens — especially women, the young indigenous peoples and local communities.” The Summit builds on previous U.N. conferences: The Global Conference on Sustainable Development, the World Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction and the ICPD, UNCED, the International Conference on Nutrition (1992), The World Conference on Education for All, the 2nd U.N. Conference on the Least Developed Countries and the World Summit for Children.
Commitments called for at the World Summit are the generation of sufficient resources, the strengthening of international cooperation and international assistance in addressing all agendas. The guiding principles of the Social Summit are based on: the empowerment of global agencies; the supportive role played by international institutions at the international and regional level, backed by country governments at the national levels and non-governmental organizations at the local level; calls for “greater attention to be given to the role of the state as the guardian of the common interest.” The United Nations agencies, including the Bretton Woods institutions, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the related international banking systems (e.g. the Asian Development Bank) will assist with loans and grants to developing countries.
The national level implementation of social development programs will ensure a progressive country taxation on behalf of the international agencies based on larger amounts from people who have a greater capacity to pay; the United Nations will monitor the national taxation systems to affirm the equitability of tax liabilities and assure that tax liabilities are collected fairly.
International cooperation for “social progress” will mobilize volunteers to implement policies. NGOs will play a central role in changing society at the local and community level.
The role of the United Nations and its associated agencies will be to improve the Bretton Woods institutions, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT), the World Trade organization (WTO) and the International Labor Organization (ILO); study new ways to finance social development through international taxation; address the issue of the World Bank’s ‘structural adjustment’ programs; and improve monitoring and reporting of international covenants on economic, social, and cultural rights, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
The mobilization of resources will include new human and financial resources from the private sector and foundations as well as in the public sector at the national and international levels. The World Bank and its associated banking institutions, global taxation and redistribution of wealth will assist in the provision of those resources (Draft Document of the World Summit for Social Development (20 Sept. 1994) and press packet; Executive Summary, secretariat of the Social Summit, 25 May 1994).
The Fourth World Women’s Congress (WWC)
The Fourth World Women’s Congress is scheduled for Beijing in September 1995. The organizing agency for the non-governmental groups in the United States is the Feminist Majority, president Eleanor Smeal.
The goals of the WWC are the elimination of discrimination against women, equality of men and women, gender equity, elimination of violence against women and the initiation of government action to achieve the goals.
Within the mission of the WWC, the platform of action aims to achieve gender-sensitive education, education of the media on women’s issue, mobilization of women as agents of change, creation of pressure for the ratification of previous treaties within the various countries; and lobbying of national governments for addition legal protections for women’s rights, access and participation.
Education is viewed as the key to development; the gender gap in education is to be eliminated by the year 2000. Gender-sensitive educational programs by governments and NGOs are to be established through campaigns and advocacy training.
The mass media are to be encouraged and held accountable for the promotion of awareness on women’s gender issues. The U.N. system is to study the impact of communications on the promotion of equality and governments are to guarantee the rights of all to communicate.
Women’s mobilization will include women’s organizations, grass-roots professional associations, women’s networks and NGOs in order to effectively and forcefully mobilize women at the community level.
Governments which have not already done so are to accede to the Human Rights Convention and the Convention on All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in order to assure universal ratification by the year 2000. Governments are also encouraged to effect national laws and administrative regulations on the previously mentioned conventions, the Convention on the Elimination of Violence Against Women and the U.N. Principles for Elderly Persons (Draft Platform for Action, E/CN6/1994/1).
An international tax proposal
James Tobin, winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Economics, proposed a 0.5 percent tax on foreign exchange transactions which is equivalent to a 4 percent difference in annual interest rates on three-month bills. Tobin’s intent was to “slow down speculative capital movements although it would be too small to deter commodity trade.” The revenue increase would amount to $1.5 trillion annually.
Known as a transaction tax, it would have to be worldwide and at the same rate in all markets. The G7, that is, the industrialized countries would coordinate policies and their “policies would still be powerful influences and constraints on other economies.” It was determined by Dr. Tobin that the proceeds of the international tax be “devoted to international purposes and be placed at the disposal of international institutions.” As he pointed out in the Human International Development Report 1994, there has been a “major surge” of interest in his proposal by those interested in raising international revenues (Human Development Report 1994, United Nations, New York).
Population decline and economic development
Demographic projections can be risky business. Paul Demeny, former President of the Population Association of America and current editor of the Population Development Review, speaking at the ICPD in Cairo, took exception to the position of the ‘Population Summit’ of the world’s scientific academies in New Delhi in 1994. At that meeting the academicians stated: “The goal should be to reach zero population growth within the lifetime of our children,” a view which Dr. Demeney described as “amazingly innumerate for a group of, mostly, hard scientists.”
Demeny went on to explain the “awkwardness” in approaching population stabilization in “global terms.” “Growing economic integration of the world economy notwithstanding, the global population is still largely a figment of the statistician’s imagination,” he said.
“The world system is, and, as far as the eye can see, is bound to remain, a system of states .… Changes that make eminent sense in one case may be wholly inappropriate in another. It is possible to add up population changes country-by-country to get a global total, but the actions prompting those changes are likely to remain predominantly local, determined by local judgments and local circumstances,” he concluded.
Further, Dr. Demeny emphasized the need to measure population policies “based on careful domestic scrutiny, according to each countries best lights, using local information, including no doubt, sound judgment concerning the country’s prospects for effective interaction with the rest of the world through trade and other exchanges.”
“If the diagnosis calls for slowing the growth of the population or for its stabilization, or indeed if it establishes the desirability for a period of negative population growth, a discussion of population policies need not involve speculations about population size but must make sure that policy measures which may be adopted serve the genuine interest of the citizenry and that their appropriateness is properly tested in the political process.
“Demographers then can aggregate the resulting national patterns of demographic behaviour and, satisfying our curiosity, present us with a global total. Today that means rapid population growth. Some time in the future it will no doubt mean zero or negative rates of global population change.”
“And what kind of mechanisms bring about modifications of demographic behaviour, nudging vital rates towards combinations that can eventually result in global stability? The changes are shaped by the ongoing transformations of socio-economic systems that set the terms under which individual members of a society interact .… Ideally, first and foremost, this is a spontaneous, cybernetic process, in which the multitude of individual members of society make use of the decentralized information available to them, and largely only to them, and in light of their circumstances, opportunities, and inclinations, act as free men and women in their private domains, and enter into voluntary hence mutually advantageous cooperation with one another” …
“When population growth is rapid, even when its pace is declining, material improvement requires rapid economic growth. If attainment of sustainable development and its demographic twin, zero population growth is in humankind’s future, today’s dominant concern, by demographic imperatives alone, must be that other badly neglected theme of the Cairo Conference: population and sustained economic growth. We must pray, give us, O Lord, homeostasis but not yet. Not yet, because inordinate numbers of human beings alive today exist in conditions of dire material poverty .…
“Whether rapid population growth made per capita progress slower than it would otherwise have been, and if so, by what margin, is an important issue, but the answers to this question remain highly contentious. The Draft programme declares that there is ‘general agreement’ on this matter. This, however is not so; if agreement there is, it is achieved only by invitation list, as even a cursory acquaintance with the relevant body of literature will demonstrate” (Dr. Paul Demeney speaking at the International Union for the Scientific Study for the Study of Population meeting at the ICPD, Cairo 1994, emphasis in the original).
World population prospects 1994
Organizations such as the United Nations Children’s Fund have long recognized that a stabilization of population would occur toward the end of the twentieth century (UNICEF, The Stare of the World’s Children, 1990, 4). The latest tables of the U.N. Population Division establishes the reality of the thesis. Bearing Dr. Paul Demeny’s scientifically cautionary statements in mind, the following world demographic data by major area, region and country is presented.
In the decades between 1950–1990, the Total Fertility Rate (per 1,000 population) showed the following declines:
Africa, 6.64 to 6.08; Asia, 5.86 to 3.40; Europe, 2.56 to 1.83; Latin America, 5.87 to 3.40; Northern America, 3.47 to 1.89; Oceania, 3.84 to 2.55.
The United Nations’ low, medium and high variant estimated projections of Total Fertility Rate from 1990–1995 to 2045–2050 are as follows:
Low variant: Africa, 5.48 to 1.60; Asia, 2.92 to 1.57; Europe, 1.53 to 1.44; Latin America, 2.94 to 1.60; Northern America, 2.02 to 1.55;
Medium variant: Africa, 5.80 to 2.10; Asia, 3.03 to 2.10; Europe, 1.58 to 2.06; Latin America, 3.09 to 2.10; Northern America, 2.06 to 2.10; Oceania, 2.51 to 2.10;
High variant: Africa, 5.88 to 2.60; Asia, 3.16 to 2.57; Europe, 1.63 to 2.49; Latin America, 3.25 to 2.60; Northern America, 2.16 to 2.50; Oceania, 2.60 to 2.55 (United Nations, World Population Prospects: The 1994 Revision, Annex tables, 122–138).
