Africa
Reproductive health
Population and development strategies
Advocacy
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Arab States
Central and Eastern Europe
Asia and the Pacific
Latin America and the Caribbean
Interregional Programmes
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Population and development strategies.
During 1997, UNFPA also continued to invest in the key programme priority area of
population and development strategies. The Governments of Botswana, Côte d’Ivoire
and Namibia approved comprehensive national population policies in 1997 and put in place
institutional structures to incorporate the recommendations of the ICPD Programme of
Action in their respective population policies. Mozambique, South Africa, Togo and
Zimbabwe are in the process of finalizing their population policies. Angola and Swaziland
have each constituted a task force to draft a population policy statement as well as a
time-bound programme for policy implementation.
To strengthen national activities in population and development, UNFPA supported the first
ministerial conference on population policies in the Sahelian countries, organized in
October by the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS) and
the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches sur la Population et le Développement (CERPOD).
The conference adopted an action plan integrating the recommendations of the Forum of
Sahelian Societies which was held in Banjul, Gambia, in September. The plan emphasizes
basic health and education services for children with special attention to the girl child.
In several countries, population data, particularly demographic data, are needed to better
integrate population variables into national development plans and sectoral programmes.
UNFPA continued support for this area, including Demographic Health Surveys (DHS) in Cape
Verde, Chad, Eritrea, Rwanda and Senegal. Data collection, especially through the conduct
of censuses, is on the agenda of most African countries. Many of these countries have
benefited from UNFPA support. However, there is a severe shortfall in resources for the
2000 round of censuses, and more donor support is needed. To help raise awareness among
donors on the need for census funding, particularly for the 2000 round of censuses, UNFPA,
in collaboration with the Interagency Census Coordination Committee (ICCC), hosted a
meeting in New York, in September. The meeting was attended by 13 bilateral donors, the
United States Bureau of Census and various United Nations bodies.
With a view to building sustainability, the Fund has initiated a review of some of its
regional programmes. As regards the Institut de Formation et de Recherche Démographiques
(IFORD), in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and the Regional Institute of Population Studies (RIPS) in
Accra, Ghana, UNFPA has continued to pursue a shift in its funding modality – from
support to such regional demographic training institutes to national-level demographic,
and population and development training institutes, in order to help build technical
capacity and develop the critical mass of trained personnel needed to effectively respond
to national needs.
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