AFRO-NETS> HAGUE FORUM: Impassioned Speeches Mark Opening Day

[Dieter Neuvians MD <neuvians@harare.iafrica.com>]

HAGUE FORUM: Impassioned Speeches Mark Opening Day
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Source: UN Wire (http://www.unfoundation.org)

Dwindling resources, the AIDS epidemic and a cycle of wars threaten 
to turn back the clock for family planning and the status of women in 
developing countries, participants at a United Nations population 
conference said yesterday. The forum, being held this week in The 
Hague, Netherlands, is assessing progress made since the 1994 Cairo 
conference on population and development.

In Cairo, representatives of almost all of the world's countries ap-
proved an action plan calling for universal access to reproductive 
health services by 2015. The plan also emphasised efforts to fight 
poverty, raise the status of women and improve their educational op-
portunities. But for many women, in Africa particularly, the Cairo 
goals are a "distant dream", according to Ghana's First Lady Nana 
Rawlings, who addressed the forum yesterday. "It is pointless, [she 
said], to talk of family planning and reproductive health when women 
are in situations of conflict and genocide." Rawlings emphasized sev-
eral other obstacles to progress toward the Cairo goals, including 
"the feminisation of poverty," discrimination against women and girls 
in education and decision-making, and an unequal global economy. 


HIV/AIDS Another Major Obstacle

Another speaker emphasised the spread of HIV/AIDS as an obstacle to 
development. Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, said the dis-
ease was the most formidable threat facing many poor nations. More 
than half of all new infections are occurring among those under 25, 
and in the most affected countries, health services are no longer 
able to cope, he said. "Just as the issues of reproductive health and 
rights were collectively identified as being intrinsically tied to 
the global development process in Cairo, measures to reduce HIV/AIDS 
must figure prominently in all future plans for progress," Piot said.

The London Independent reports in an overview of the conference: 
"Earth has never been so demographically divided. At one extreme, 
wealthy nations worry about the strain on their economies from a ris-
ing number of elderly people. At the other extreme are countries that 
seem entrapped by a combination of poverty and high population growth 
and density".


A Roster of VIPs Addresses the Forum

The opening session of the forum also featured speeches by Louise 
Frechette, the deputy secretary-general of the UN; Baron Vaea, the 
prime minister of Tonga; Eveline Herfkens, the Dutch minister of de-
velopment co-operation; and Elizabeth Aguirre de Calderon Sol, the 
first lady of El Salvador.

In opening remarks, UN Population Fund Director Nafis Sadik empha-
sised the need for social as well as political change. Referring to a 
book on community-building by US First Lady Hillary Clinton, Sadik 
said: "I think I have the heard the phrase 'it takes a village'. But 
to do its job, the village must be full of educated and healthy peo-
ple. That is how we will secure the future". Hillary Rodham Clinton 
will return to the Hague Forum today to deliver an address that was 
postponed while she attended the funeral of Jordan's King Hussein. 
Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed a pre-forum gathering of non-
governmental groups on Sunday.


China About to Adopt a New Population Policy, Sadik says

Hinting at a potentially significant policy move, the UNFPA's Sadik 
told reporters that she expects China to soon announce it is dropping 
its one-child-per-family policy and other coercive population poli-
cies, a move that could pave the way for the United States to resume 
its aid to UNFPA. Sadik said the UNFPA has been negotiating to launch 
a new program in China that meets the Cairo principles. 

Meanwhile, the 'Earth Times' offers a number of features on population 
issues in Bangladesh, Ghana and Egypt. In Bangladesh, women are hav-
ing trouble with the NORPLANT contraceptive device; in Egypt, fewer 
girls have been circumcised in the years since the Cairo conference; 
and Ghana is being "praised ... as perhaps the best example" of ef-
forts to implement the Cairo plan.

In the Netherlands, a "controversial" Roman Catholic bishop stirred 
debate on Sunday by calling for widespread distribution of condoms. 
Martinus Muskens, the bishop of Breda, told a Dutch television pro-
gram that a change in the church's anti-contraception stance would 
"greatly help reduce the devastating impact on women's health and 
lives of the inability to control their fertility". 

For more details on the Hague forum or the UNFPA, see: 
http://www.unfpa.org/news/pressroom/1999/hague5.htm

Also, see the Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report's coverage. The 
free Report is available at:
http://www.kff.org

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