| Achieving MDG and ICPD Goals
The Millennium Development Goals, particularly the eradication of extreme
poverty and hunger, cannot be achieved if questions of population and
reproductive health are not squarely addressed.
—United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi A. Annan, 2002
The Millennium Development Goals represent a global partnership to create an environment conducive to sustainable development and the elimination of poverty.
Population dynamics and trends, which are closely linked to economic progress, must be taken into consideration if the eight MDGs are to be achieved. Reproductive health and women’s empowerment, in turn, exert a powerful influence on demography and population trends, and are critical to the achievement of the MDGs, as has been widely recognized (see below).
The linkages between reproductive health, population, women’s empowerment and social progress are articulated in the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo in 1994, which guides UNFPA. In fact, the MDGs were based, in part, on the Cairo Consensus, and on some of the other major international agreements of the 1990s, including the Beijing Platform for Action.
One of UNFPA’s important roles is to clarify, document and advocate these linkages at the country level and make sure that population, gender and reproductive health issues are given full consideration in policymaking. One of the ways UNFPA achieves this is by participating in planning frameworks that developing countries and donors use to guide efforts to reduce poverty and effectively channel development assistance. The fund also participates in many regional and global forums for this purpose.
In these and other policy dialogues, UNFPA uses its expertise and experience in the areas of population, gender and reproductive health to ensure that these fundamental issues are addressed.
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The UN Millennium Project brought together more than 250 experts from around the world, including development practitioners and national and international policymakers, as well as civil society and private sector representatives, to identify best practices and to plot the way forward for meeting the MDGs. Their 2005 report, Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals, reaffirmed that UNFPA’s work on population, gender and reproductive health is central to reducing poverty.
For instance, the report pointed to the strong links between rapid population growth, high fertility, ill-timed pregnancies and poverty, which it called “a demographic-related poverty trap.” The poorest people happen to have the highest fertility and the largest families. This is in large part because they have the least access to information and services for family planning, and because, more generally, women lack the empowering environment to act on the choices they make.
The Millennium Project’s Task Force on Environmental Sustainability report found that “[F]ertility is highest in the poorest countries as well as among the poorest people in these and middle-income societies. It is clearly then no surprise that these same places have the highest levels of unmet need for family planning and reproductive health services, which, in concert with other health, education and gender equality issues, must be addressed with policies and programs to slow population growth and realize synergistic improvements.”
Another finding from Investing in Development is that each region’s prospects for progress towards the MDGs are affected by its demographic conditions. Poorer countries are more likely to have high fertility and high mortality, resulting in large youth populations with low adult ratios. |
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