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UNFPA GLOBAL POPULATION POLICY UPDATE
Issue 51 - 20 May 2005
On 11 and 12 April 2005, over 73
Ministers of Finance, Planning, Health and other senior policy makers
from 20 developing and developed nations gathered in Stockholm,
Sweden for a high-level round table entitled, "Reducing Poverty
and Achieving the MDGs: Investing in Reproductive Health and Rights"
The round table aimed at forging a consensus among world leaders
on how investing in reproductive health and rights contributes to
reducing poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs). The meeting was organized jointly by the Government of Sweden
and UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund.
At the conclusion of the Round table, the participants adopted the
"Stockholm Call to Action", which reflects the actions
necessary to more effectively use investments in reproductive health
and rights to reduce poverty and promote development in poor countries.
The Stockholm Call to Action calls on world leaders to recognize
the strong links between poverty reduction and reproductive health,
and to mobilize political commitment to promote reproductive health,
in particular when heads of State meet at the United Nations this
September to review progress on implementing the Millennium Declaration.
The Call to Action also supports the United Nations Millennium Project's
recommendation to include universal access to reproductive health
by 2015 as a target for the development goal on improving Maternal
Health. The Millennium Project comprises 265 of the world's leading
development experts.
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DECLARATION
Stockholm Call to Action:
Investing in Reproductive Health and Rights as a Development Priority
Promoting development and eradicating
extreme poverty is an urgent global priority that demands bold action.
This ambitious agenda, embodied in the Millennium Declaration and
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), requires governments, civil
society, and international agencies to address population issues,
in particular to secure people?s right to sexual and reproductive
health, as agreed by 179 countries at the 1994 International Conference
on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, and its 5-year review.
However, reproductive health and rights remain elusive for the vast
majority of the world's people. Complications during pregnancy and
childbirth are among the leading causes of death and illness for
women in developing countries, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic takes approximately
3 million lives each year. This undermines development by diminishing
the quality of people's lives, exacerbating poverty, and placing
heavy burdens on individuals, families, communities, and nations.
UNFPA and the Government of Sweden convened the high-level roundtable,
"Reducing Poverty and Achieving the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs): Investing in Reproductive Health and Rights"
on 11 and 12 April 2005 in Stockholm to draw global attention to
the need for increased investments in reproductive health and rights
and build on progress made in reproductive health policies and programmes
in many countries. Participants, including ministers, parliamentarians,
heads of the United Nations and other multilateral agencies, donor
representatives, and leaders of non-governmental and youth organization,
recognize the following:
1. The development goals contained in the United Nations Millennium
Declaration adopted by the General Assembly in September 2000 and
the goals set by the other international conferences of the 1990s,
especially the ICPD and its 5-year Review, provide a broad and coherent
framework of commitments to guide member states, international agencies,
civil society and other stakeholders to address extreme poverty
in its many dimensions;
2. Achieving women's empowerment and gender equality, as agreed
in CEDAW and as reiterated in Vienna, Cairo, Beijing, and at UNGASS
on HIV/AIDS, are highly important ends in themselves and crucial
to the achievement of the MDGs by 2015, and investments in reproductive
health and rights are needed to promote women's ability to take
advantage of economic and political opportunities;
3. Strong links exist between poverty, unequal gender relations,
fertility, ill-timed and unwanted pregnancies, and unsafe abortion;
and evidence shows that investments in and access to reproductive
health, including family planning and sexual health, are essential
to breaking the cycle of poverty and freeing national and household
resources for investments in health, nutrition, and education, promoting
economic growth with tangible returns;
4. Access to reproductive and sexual health information and services
is integral to efforts to curb the HIV/AIDS epidemic and prevent
individuals and households from falling deeper into poverty, given
that the overwhelming majority of HIV infections are due to sexual
transmission or associated with pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding,
and since women and girls are highly vulnerable to HIV infections
for social and biological reasons;
5. Addressing the persistence of high levels of maternal mortality
and morbidity in low-income countries, despite the existence of
effective interventions, requires stronger health systems including
universal access to reproductive health and greater attention to
the nutritional needs of women and children;
6. Investments in young people's health and education are needed
to address their particular vulnerability to reproductive and sexual
health risks and to realize their potential as healthy and productive
members of society;
7. Reproductive health programmes should be rights-based and put
individuals, particularly girls and women, at the center of service
provision, recognizing that access to reproductive health requires
participatory approaches building on cultural diversity, focusing
on the special needs of marginalized groups and including communities
and leaders.
We affirm our commitment to the attainment of the MDGs and call
others to join us in the following actions:
1. Mobilize political commitment to advance reproductive health
and rights, and their contributions to reducing poverty and achieving
the MDGs, in national and global meetings, including the 2005 review
of the UN Millennium Declaration, and in the implementation, at
all levels, of the commitments from the major international conferences;
2. Welcome the report by the Secretary-General of the United Nations
on the follow-up to the outcome of the Millennium Summit and its
reference to population issues, including reproductive health; and
support the recommendations on reproductive health and rights in
the Millennium Project reports, including using universal access
to reproductive health by 2015, as a target for MDG 5 on Maternal
Health with appropriate indicators;
3. Invest in efforts to increase women's decision-making power in
all aspects of their lives, including reproductive health, and strengthen
institutional mechanisms and socio-cultural practices that protect
and promote the human rights of women and girls, combat gender-based
violence, and advance gender equality, the achievement of which
requires the involvement of men;
4. Building on effective programme experiences, strengthen health
systems to support reproductive and sexual health, promote child
and maternal health, and combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases,
ensuring sufficient investments, motivated, well-trained and adequately
paid health workers, scaled-up infrastructure, improved supply chain
for commodities and supplies, and strong management and information
systems;
5. Ensure priority investment in reproductive health, guided by
the Reproductive Health Strategy adopted by the World Health Assembly
in 2004, in national and sectoral development plans and budgets
(including through poverty reduction strategies, sector-wide approaches,
medium term expenditure frameworks, public-private partnerships
and other mechanisms) to ensure access to quality reproductive health
services, including youth-friendly services;
6. Link HIV/AIDS and STI prevention, counseling, treatment and care
efforts with sexual and reproductive health, including integrating
HIV/AIDS and STI programmes within existing reproductive health
settings, and vice versa, with special attention to female-controlled
methods and the reproductive health needs of people living with
HIV/AIDS;
7. Invest in young people's health and development to ensure they
have access to gender-sensitive reproductive and sexual health and
HIV/AIDS information, education and services, with privacy and confidentiality,
without discrimination, within a comprehensive approach to develop
their life skills and opportunities and support their human rights;
8. Continue to work toward improved aid effectiveness, harmonization,
and alignment, as per the Paris Declaration, in support of national
action such as through sector-wide approaches, and improve monitoring
and evaluation systems to increase accountability and manage for
results;
9. Secure the financial commitments at national and international
levels, made at the 1994 ICPD Programme of Action, and advocate
for an increase in official development assistance and a higher
proportion to support human rights, gender equality, and reproductive
health, and close existing funding gaps on reproductive health commodities
and logistics, in the context of the March 2002 International Conference
on Financing for Development (Monterrey), the completion of the
Doha Round, and the implementation of MDG 8 on global partnerships;
Work with all partners (including governments, parliamentarians,
UN system organizations, bilateral and other multilateral agencies,
regional development banks, civil society organizations, the media,
the private sector, youth, and women's groups) to reach out to leaders
around the world, emphasizing the multiple benefits from increased
investments in reproductive health and rights, and the centrality
of these efforts under strong national leadership toward the achievement
of the MDGs.
All previous issues
of the UNFPA Global Population Policy Update can now be found on
UNFPA's website at: http://www.unfpa.org/parliamentarians/news/newsletters.htm
.
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This newsletter is issued
by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in its capacity as
secretariat for the biennual International Parliamentarians' Conference
on the Implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action (IPCI/ICPD).
The first IPCI/ICPD was held in November 2002 in Ottawa, Canada
and the second in October 2004 in Strasbourg, France. These dispatches
are intended to highlight important developments taking place around
the world so that parliamentarians can be kept informed of and learn
from the successes, setbacks and challenges encountered by their
fellow parliamentarians in other countries and regions in their
efforts to promote the implementation of the Programme of Action
of the International Conference on Population and Development (September
1994, Cairo, Egypt). It should be noted that UNFPA does not necessarily
endorse all of the policies described in this newsletter.
Please send mailing list update information to Ragaa Said at said@unfpa.org . If you have any questions or comments on the content of this newsletter, please contact Harumi Kodama at kodama@unfpa.org or Safiye Cagar at cagar@unfpa.org . |
