PRESS
RELEASE
The ICPD+5 review
process
Round Table Considers
Ways Civil Society Can Help Promote
Reproductive Health and
Women's Rights
DHAKA, Bangladesh, 28 July -- Legislation,
lobbying and mass mobilization are all part of laying the groundwork
for reproductive rights and health and women’s empowerment,
according to participants at an international meeting here.
The Round Table on Partnership with Civil Society in the
Implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action went into its second
day on Tuesday, with a discussion on creating an "enabling
environment" to carry out the recommendations of the 1994
International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in
Cairo.
Speakers -- including the leader of a grass-roots women’s group
in India, a South African official concerned with social
development, an advocate for international funding of population
programmes, and parliamentarians from several countries -- offered a
wide variety of examples of how to promote change that will help
countries realize the goals adopted by the ICPD.
Convened by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and hosted
by the Government of Bangladesh, the four-day round-table meeting is
part of "ICPD+5", a series of international activities reviewing
progress since the Cairo conference.
Representatives from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and
other sectors of civil society as well as from governments are
discussing national experiences in carrying out the ICPD action
plan, with a focus on civil society involvement. The aim is to
identify successes and constraints, and recommend actions to
accelerate progress -- particularly policy changes that will
facilitate partnerships involving a broad range of civil society
actors, as called for in the Programme of Action.
The first of two plenary sessions was on the theme "partnership
in action, civil society, government and the international
community". It was opened by Mirai Chatterjee, general secretary of
India’s Self-Employed Women’s Association, who offered lessons based
on her group’s work mobilizing rural women. She said that women
should be accepted as equal partners, rather than be seen as
liabilities or merely recipients of charity, and that their
significant contributions as workers must be recognized. Women’s
right to control their work and health should also be
acknowledged.
She said that health and family planning programmes need to be
decentralized, and designed and run by local people -- including
community organizations, village councils, women’s associations,
labour unions and cooperatives. Greater integration of health and
family welfare services at the grass-roots level is also needed,
with an emphasis on improving the health and nutritional standards
of poor communities. Grass-roots women’s organizations should play a
lead role "because their programmes and services can reach the
poorest of the poor."
At the same time, she added, men should be involved in all
aspects of health and family planning programmes, and many men are
open to such involvement. They should be given information about
their own health and that of women, family planning, and how to deal
with addictions and alcoholism and prevent sexually transmitted
diseases, including HIV/AIDS.
Speaking from the floor on the role of men, Glenda Simms,
Executive Director of the Bureau of Women Affairs in Jamaica, said
the issue of male involvement should be tackled differently in
different societies. In Jamaica, she said, men are being asked to
take their roles as fathers more seriously and to redefine their
perceptions of manhood.
The next speaker was Fidelia Maforah, Director of Social
Development in South Africa’s National Department of Welfare and
Population Development. She said the South African Government had
helped create an enabling environment for the promotion of ICPD
objectives by introducing a new Constitution including a Bill of
Rights, and enacting such legislation as the Not-For-Profit
Organizations Act-- which ensured the rights of all NGOs to be
registered -- the Termination of Pregnancy Act and the Population
Policy Act.
One problem to be addressed, she said, is that many South African
NGOs are not based in local communities. In creating partnerships to
empower women and advance the ICPD’s broad objectives, she
suggested, NGOs should do more to involve grass-roots women and
their organizations in policy making.
The president of Population Action International, an advocacy NGO
based in the United States, Amy Coen, spoke on the need to involve
new partners in the effort to fund reproductive health and
population programmes. This is critical, she said, because donor
governments are not meeting the financial commitments made at the
ICPD, and particularly because the U.S. Congress has been
withholding funds for population programmes. She suggested that
civil society groups seek funding from private foundations as well
as from corporations, but acknowledged that in her country
businesses are reluctant to get involved in reproductive health
issues because of the controversy surrounding abortion.
Next, the round table turned to a discussion on the role of
parliamentarians in creating an enabling environment for
implementing the Cairo programme, led by three women lawmakers from
Uganda, Peru and Mongolia.
Grace Akello, a Member of Parliament from Uganda, said that
lawmakers can use all of their traditional roles -- as legislators,
appropriators of budgets and mobilizers -- to help carry out the
Programme of Action. In addition, they can serve as as a bridge
linking community-based organizations and NGOs with governments and
international bodies.
She reported that Uganda’s parliamentarians have enacted laws
that promote women’s rights, including a Land Act which recognizes
women as co-owners of land for the first time. A group of lawmakers
have formed the Uganda Parliamentarians’ Forum on Food and Security,
Population and Development, which works to enact progressive laws
and ensure their enforcement, as well as lobby for the allocation of
adequate resources for population programmes.
A parliamentarian from Peru, Beatriz Merino, highlighted laws
that promote the rights of women in her country. One of them is a 25
per cent quota that encourages the election of women to political
positions. She said parliamentarians should enact stronger
legislation to protect women, outlaw sexual harassment and promote
women’s self-employment. NGOs should try to convince government
finance ministries that money spent on women’s reproductive health
is a worthy investment, she added.
B. Narantsetseg, a Member of Parliament from Mongolia,
reported that since its transition to a market economy, her country
has faced social problems such as high unemployment and
prostitution; some 36 per cent of the population lives in poverty,
according to the World Bank. Since there were no real NGOs under the
country’s former socialist government, she said, the country has
encouraged the formation of genuine ones by exempting them from
taxes on the donations they receive from corporations.
Following the plenary session, round-table participants went into
working groups to discuss the four themes of the Dhaka meeting:
Partnership to create an enabling environment for carrying out the
Programme of Action; Social mobilization to promote and carry out
the Programme; Partnership for capacity-strengthening,
accountability, coalition-building and financial stability; and
Partnership to promote full access to reproductive health
services.
Earlier today, participants heard about plans for an NGO forum,
to be held on 6-7 February 1999 in The Hague, just before the
UNFPA-organized international forum there on ICPD+5. They were
briefed by Wouter Meijer, director of the World Population
Foundation, a Dutch NGO. The NGO forum, he said, is intended to
maximize NGOs’ influence at the intergovernmental forum and at the
special session of the United Nations General Assembly in June and
July, and to discuss the role of NGOs in ICPD implementation. A
secretariat has been set up to coordinate plans for the meeting; an
international advisory group is being formed and will meet at least
twice before the forum; and national NGO focal points will be named,
along with focal points on key issue areas.
(For information purposes only. Not an official
document.)
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