C H A P T E R   5
Finding the Resources



Workers repair road in poor barrio in Bogotá, Colombia.
Increased resources for development are
essential to alleviating poverty and improving
people's quality of life.

Investing in Development

Thirty years after UNFPA started its operations with $1 million, global resources for population and development are reckoned in billions of dollars. Five years after the historic consensus of the ICPD, its goals are universally accepted as necessary to promote human rights and personal well-being, fight poverty and improve national and global security.

The integrated package of population and reproductive health investments in developing countries defined in the ICPD Programme of Action, costed at $17 billion in 2000, is recognized as a vital part of overall development strategy.

A complete social services package would add basic health, basic education, nutrition, and low-cost water and sanitation in less-developed regions. The yearly cost of the total package has been estimated in the range of $30-40 billion above 1990 levels in the year 2000.1

Coming up short
The world is far from meeting these needs. Official development assistance for all purposes, economic as well as social, has shrunk from almost $61 billion in 1992 to $47.6 billion in 1997. Meanwhile the demands of peace-keeping and emergencies have increased dramatically.

Funding for the ICPD Programme of Action is far behind the total foreseen for the end of the century. Both donor and programme countries will fall short of their estimated shares of the burden ($5.7 billion and $11.3 billion, respectively). The donor countries are providing only about $1.9-2.0 billion. A small number of large developing countries account for most of the $7.7 billion annually from domestic resources.

The private sector, including NGOs and foundations, is helping to bridge the assistance gap, and user fees for services are generating resources in developing countries — but nothing can replace the inherent responsibility of governments, both developing and donor. Most people in most countries depend to some extent on public education and health care; and poor people in poor countries depend on them more than most.

Donors are providing $1.9 billion a year— one third of the $5.7 billion needed to implement the ICPD agenda.

The Resource Challenge
The shortage of resources is not confined to population. It has structural as well as temporary causes, such as:

• The pressures of globalization;
• A widening gap between wealthy and poor nations;
• A widening gap between rich and poor within nations;
• Donors’ retreat from political commitment to development assistance.

In addition, developing countries have had to weather financial and economic crises, and sweeping "structural adjustment" of their economies emphasizing reductions in public expenditure.

Structural adjustment programmes are intended to improve countries’ potential for economic development by reducing public sector expenditure. But structural adjustment has had a disproportionate impact on the poor, who depend most on free or low-cost public services. When public services are cut or charges for service are imposed the poor have nowhere to turn. This has been documented in education and health as well as other areas.2

All of these have had their effect on implementing the ICPD Programme of Action.

What will it take?
Finding the resources to move the ICPD Programme of Action from paper to practice is a matter of political commitment as well as of money. It calls for additional investment in reorganization and reform in the public sector, and in recruitment, training and motivation to make the most of human resources. It calls for:

• Renewed efforts to increase resources overall, which were made by all countries at the International Conference on Population and Development;
• Renewed dedication to provide an increased share of available resources, international, public and private, to basic social services including reproductive health;
• Efficiency gains. A variety of actions can produce gains in efficiency, depending on local conditions;
• Partnerships between governments, civil society and donors — to improve financing and extend information and services to where they are most needed.

This is a challenge as much for the international community as for countries, both to find additional assistance for development, and to direct it in the most productive way.

Increasing Resources
Developing countries are engaged in three simultaneous transitions: changing the definition of essential health services and the ways they are integrated with each other; redistributing responsibilities in public service systems from central to local actors; and redefining the role and scope of public services.

Increased external resources for population and reproductive health programmes are essential to help countries make these transitions, and at the same time take advantage of them to implement the recommendations of ICPD, for example:

• To design and implement programmes which respond fully to clients’ needs and priorities in the changing environment;
• To help strengthen physical, human resource and institutional infrastructures;
• To provide technical assistance and commodities.

Additional external and national resources are urgently required:

• To expand advocacy for the necessary investments for development;

• To improve data for programme design, implementation and monitoring;

• To meet the growing volume and diversity of service demands and needs;

• To improve the quality of health services, including for sexual and reproductive health;

• To retrain staff to eliminate provider-based barriers to voluntary service access, including poverty status, geographical location, gender, age, and ethnic or cultural group;

• To extend information and services to underserved populations, particularly the poor;

• To address the cultural, social and economic barriers that restrict information and opportunity;

• To improve the recruitment, the training, the retention and the motivation of the staff needed to implement the programmes, from the central to the local levels.

| MAIN MENU | CONTENTS | NEXT |

For more information:
United Nations Population Fund
Information and External Relations Division
220 E. 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017, U.S.A.
Tel. 212-297-5020; fax: 212-557-6416
E-mail: ryanw@unfpa.org. Web site: www.unfpa.org